My brother bought a Toshiba Dolby Digital kit and I just can't figure it out. It included 2 front satelites, 2 rear, 1 center channel, and 1 unpowered 10" sub.

The sub uses a passthrough to get its power from the front satelites, so I'm wondering how it is supposed to get a signal when in Dolby Digital mode?

Is there any way he is going to get it to work in Dolby Digital without it sounding like crap (no bass)?

Thanks,
Joe

It doesn't. An unpowered sub doesn't get the LFE signal from your DD receiver. Matter of fact, as far as the receiver is concerned, you have no subwoofer and you should configure your receiver as such. This way, the LFE effects wil be passed to your front speakers and your speakers will try to reproduce them. But I can already tell you that they'll do a poor job of doing so.

Moral of the story: don't get those all-in-one, HT in a box, deals. You really do need to sink some dough into a powered sub to get true 5.1 surround.

I am not fimilure with your system but bost will have a crossover for the satellites on the back with 4 input and 4 output connections. In this case you hook the fronts l/r channel from you amp to the sub. Then connect the front speaker to the sub speaker output connections. Set your fronts to large with no sub on your reciever. This will direct the LFE channel to the fronts (the sub) the sub will play the LFE and filter the signal to the sats so they to not try to reproduce the low freqs. I would assume your system can be hooked up like this and do just fine.