OK, so my girlfriends stepdad just bought a Hitachi 51F510 TV from Circuit City. It was $1614 I believe. Anyhow, I have a few questions for the big screen/home theater experts out there:

1. How do you hook up the PS2 or any other video game system? He has the PS2 plugged into the back (input 4) and we can't seem to get the PS2 to work. We tried looking at the manual, but it doesn't seem to be helping.

2. What kind of audio cables are good? He bought some fiber obtic ones for like $40, but they don't seem to work with this TV. The monster cables he got for video seem to work fine, though.

3. What are some optimal settings for most big screens? Aspect ratio, all that jazz. The biggest TV he had before this was a 27 inch so we have no idea, lol.

4. What about HDTV? The back of the TV has a plug that says HDMI (I assume that is HDTV) and he said when he got the DirecTv they told him they had a HDTV setup or whatnot for his dish.

5. Picture in Picture....is it possible with sat. TV or no? We have heard yes and no, so we're not sure. If it is possible, how do you set it up?

Any help is appreciated. We're trying to get it all set up for tomorrow to watch Star Wars and play Battlefront, so obviously it'd mean alot if we could fix everything by then

HDMI is a connection. you will need a HDMI cable to connect from your HDTV receiver (directv has em if you want high def) to your tv. i would run the optic straight to your receiver (if you have one) and pick up the sound that way.

for hdtv you will need 16x9 setting.

PiP will work if you have the right dish (HDTV dish will work). Directv will set it up for you when they install.

He bought a home theater system, we just haven't hooked it up yet.

We're really stumped about the PS2, though. Not sure how to hook it up. No picture or sound. Both the DVD player and the VCR work fine (it's a DVD recorder/VCR combo). Any advice on that?

The optical cable he bought will run from the DVD player's optical digital output to the surround sound receiver, not the TV. The same is true of any satellite receiver that is equipped with digital audio out.

For the DVD player, make sure you're connected to the TV with component video cables (three cables, all carrying video), and set the DVD player to output a 16:9 picture. This will be a setting in the DVD player's setup menu (the player's menu, not a disc menu).

Yeah we just found that out about the optical cable. Apparently his "technical engineer" son set up the TV and claimed the fiber optic cables wouldn't work. I was looking at the back of the DVD recorder and the receiver and found them.

Another question is since we have the fiber optic going to the DVD, the DVD player works through the speakers, which is cool. So how do we get games and regular TV to go through them? Regular A/V cables? Or is there a better quality way?

Sorry if I am asking too many questions.

PS2: has digital opitical out, so you should be able to connect that to the receiver using an optical cable.

It also has component out. You can connect that directly to the TV.

Another option is to have all your video devices connect to the receiver (if it does component video switching) and then have a single component out going to the TV. That way you can just leave the TV set to Video 1, and when you use the remote to select the different devices (Sat. TV, DVD, PS2/Aux) both the correct audio and video will play.

If that's not an option, then you should hook the PS2 up to the TV via the component cable connections. Then, when you select Video 4 from the remote (you may have to scroll through from Video 1 to 2 ...) you should be able to see the PS2 video.

To hook up other audio components to the receiver, just use the best audio connection the device offers. Digital out is best (either coax or optical) then the RCA left right 2 channel connectors.

The short answer is that anything you want to hear through the speakers has to be connected to the receiver. This is what the receiver does: It takes whatever sources you have connected to it, amplifies the signals and outputs them to the speakers. The receiver probably does video switching to, which, as Blade wrote, can minimize the number of connections you have running to your TV.

As far as how you connect each component to the receiver, that depends on the component. PS2 will have optical digital. Some cable and satellite receivers will have optical digital too, but many only have stereo analog (left and right RCA cables). If you have a hi-fi VCR, it will only have analog stereo cables.

Ok, so let me break down the problem now, it's really frustrating.

We have the optical connecter on back of the receiver, ps2, dvd/vcr recorder, and the directv box.

Right now we have the optical cable running from the dvd to the receiver, so dvd's get played through the speaker.

We want games and TV to go through the receiver. I have 3 sets of A/V plugs and no idea where to plug them.

How do you get everything plugged in so it's easier, I mean to min. the connections?

Another thing is we have monster component cables. I hooked them up to input 1 on the tv, and all 3 connected makes the picture black and white with black spots. The monster cables aren't working on component hookups, it ony works right on the regular red, white, and yellow ones. The picture is visibly fuzzy around the edges. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the monster cable when you have to plug it in where regular audio/video cables would do?

Basically all I want to know is the easiest, not too expensive way to hook up everything to the receiver and get surround sound. That and what is up with the monster cables.

Can you tell us the model of the receiver you have? And DVD player? We don't know what type or how many connectors you have on the back of the receiver, so it's hard to recommend the "best" way to do it. Same with the DVD player.

I personally think Radio Shack video cables would be fine for your application, and wouldn't recommend the extra cost of Monster video cables. But that's personal perception, so it's up to you.

If you are using the yellow connector that's composite video and will look worse than either s-video or component video. That has more to do with the type of connection, than the cables.

Component cable hook up black and white picture: Is it possible you have the cables hooked up incorrectly? The connectors on the DVD player/PS2/DirecTV and the connectors on the TV should all be similarly color coded: red, blue & green. You need to make sure that red goes to red, etc.

Or if you want to go by labels (which is more accurate) and the label on your TV doesn't match the labels on the player, the following is from your TV's manual and shows the different label conventions for component video connectors:

Your component outputs may be labeled Y, B-Y, and R-Y. In this case, connect the components B-Y output to the TV’s PB input and
the components R-Y output to the TV’s PR input.

Your component outputs may be labeled Y-CBCR. In this case, connect the component CB output to the TV’s PB input and the
component CR output to the TV’s PR input.

Here's some more connection suggestions:

If your receiver has enough connectors I would recommend doing this (assumes you only have one optical cable):
DVD Player should have component video (3 connectors green, blue and red) and optical digital out. Connect video from the player to DVD Video in on the receiver (make sure you're connecting green connector from the player to green connector on the receiver...same for red and blue), connect optical from player to DVD optical in on receiver. If this doesn't give you VCR video, they I think you will have to use the s-video connectors and cable to get video for both.

PS2: same as DVD.

DirecTV: same as DVD. (Or do you run this through your VCR? I don't have DirecTV, so I'm not sure that's an option...here's a page on how to hook up your DirecTV http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/learn/...gEquipment.dsp ) (I'm also assuming you don't have Hi Def. DirecTV...DirecTV has this, I'm just not sure if you need a different box and subscription plan to take advantage of it.)

Then, there should be a component video out on the receiver. Connect that to the Video 1 connector on your TV.

You should now be getting sound for your DVD, PS2 and DirecTV out of your speakers, and all video on your TV from Video 1.

If you don't have enough connectors on your receiver, you can connect 2 component video devices to it (I would suggest the two devices you use the least) and then connect the receiver's component video out to the tv's video 2 connector, and then connect the third most often used device directly to Video 1 on the TV. All Audio connections should be the same.

If your receiver doesn't have enough optical digital ins, you'll have to decide which ones you want to get the digital audio, and use the red & white 2 channel audio connector for the other one(s). Just make sure that you're matching the Audio in description (DVD, TV, Aux) with the corresponding Video in.

Finally, if you don't have enough component video cables, then use s-video. If you don't have enough of them, then use the yellow RCA video cable. But I recommend using component if you can.

Hope that helps more than it confuses.

Blade gave some great advice but I want to add that after connecting the component cables for video and the optical or coax for digital audio many times you'll need to change a setting in the menus of that device to tell it the connection type you're using. By default most dvd players and the PS2 are set to anolog sound and the TV might be set for RGB rather than Y,B-Y, R-Y or vice versa. If you don't tell it that the audio is now being sent through the digital cable rather than the anaolg cable you'll get no sound or it will only be in stereo.