Topic: Home Cinema

[Clive]

Oh come on Sandra, if I can work it out then anybody can.    You will be delighted with it when it's all set up and running.  Just let us know if you experience any difficulties with it and I'm sure we can help.

[Sandra]

Its not so much the wiring thats the problem its where do I put all the extra speakers and bits and pieces  

[Clive]

It's always a problem Sandra.  My set-up is far from perfect but the good news is that after much experimenation with speaker positions, I found that it's very forgiving and as long as you have them spaced out the effect will still be excellent.

[Sandra]

Well I have just spent the last 30 minutes getting all the bits and pieces out of the box and placing them where they need to be,or where I think.
I already have a tv with Dolby Pro logic so I will just replace the rear ones with these ones.
The main amplifier/boom box thing is sat on the floor next to the tv.
I could do with seeing if I can leve my current central speaker in place as that would be easy as it is part of the tv stand.
That just leaves the remote controlling gizmo and the front speakers which I would have liked to have been the same as the rear ones so I could hang them on the wall.Unfortunately these are meant to stand on something  
Anyway thats enough  for today,I will leave it until tomorrow as I have already upgraded the ram on no 1 PC and fitted new speakers to that along with a subwoofer,sounds better than my stereo now  

[Clive]

Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.    You have had a very productive day Sandra.  I wondered why you were up so early!

[Simon]

Told you before Sandra - Home Cinema is for boys only.  You haven't a chance!  

Seriously though, you'll enjoy it once it's all set up.  As long as you position the speakers as equal in distance from centre as your room will allow, with the rears behind and the fronts in front, you should be OK.

[Lona]

I honestly don't know when Clive and Sandra find the time to watch home cinema with the amount of time they spend on here

[Sandra]

Well its just in case the ADSL line goes down sometime Lona  
Actually at the place I got the home cinema kit and my new pc speakers they had a 42 inch plasma screen TV too for £1700  
I cant afford that until I win the lottery or similar  
It must have been set up as the biggest PC monitor in the world as it was connected to a PC and the arrow for the cursor was about the same size as Robin Hood would have used  8)

[Lona]

We could go halfers, Sandra but then you would have to move to Scotland

[Clive]

That is a truly amazing price for a 42" plasma Sandra.  When I bought mine it seemed an extravagent purchase but I honestly don't regret it.  It has made a huge   difference to watching the telly.

[Adept]

It has made a huge   difference to watching the telly.

Trouble is, it's so big, Clive has to watch it from the living room of the house opposite

[Sandra]

Trouble is, it's so big, Clive has to watch it from the living room of the house opposite

He bought that house so he could charge people for watching the tv,the rents free but it costs them £10 per hour to watch tv  

[Sandra]

Thanks to the encouragement from Clive and a little help from Simon,althouh as I said before it was their fault anyway that I bought the thing   , I now have my home cinema set up and working  
I still have to find a permanent place for the front speakers as one is sat on the window sill near the TV and the other is on my piano at the opposite side of the room.
The rear ones were just a simple case of swapping the ones already on the wall for the pro logic part of my tv.
Unfortunately I think the ones I have taken down were probably better quality as they are a lot heavier and slightly bigger than the new ones  
The new ones are 4 ohms impedance compared to the 8 ohms  of the old ones so I thought it best to use the new ones,also all the speakers match  
For some reason the DVD player (digital input to the amplifier via a co axial connection) volume is a lot lower than the Video (analogue input to the amplifier via the two phono plugs) volume.
So much so that I have the amplifier set to maximum and the decoder volume at around 3/4 max volume to hear it at the same level as when I am watching the tv through the video,when I have the amplifier set at about half the max volume and I  then have a large range of volume control via the decoder.
I have to watch the tv through the videp in order to connect it to the decoder as I dont have audio out on the tv I only have it on my video.
The DVD player and the VIDEO are both on the same AV channel on my tv connected by scart sockets through a switchable two into one scart connector.
The volume through that is roughly similar on both suggesting some problem or mismatch with the co axial connection from the DVD to the amplifier.
Theres is an optical output from the DVD and an optical input to the amplifier does anyone think that that may somehow improve the volume of the dvd player  

Edited to add :
I have just tried connecting the DVD via the phono out and the volume level is still the same as with the co axial one so I cant see the optical connection making any difference  

[Simon]

That's strange Sandra.  Usually when that sort of thing happens, it's a case of 'two into one won't go', i.e., two components are somehow connected to the same input.  I would double check the connections, just to be certain, but from what we've already discussed, that doesn't seem to be the case.

The next thing I would look for is a setting in the menu options of the DVD player (sound settings?), to enable the digital out.  On some players, my old Sony for example, the default was 'off', and the analogue signal was siginificantly quieter than the digital one.

There's no way you should have to have the amp at full volume to be able to hear anything, so I would suggest that something is amiss, either in the connections or the settings in the DVD player, or the control box.

[Sandra]

Tried everything I can think of Simon,changed what I could without making any difference to th elevel but I have just put a music cd in and thats playing at about the correct volume maybe I have some quiet dvds,but I played them before without thinking I had to max the tv volume  

Edited to add:
 I have just tried a VCD that I did on the PC of Spiderman and that is ok for the volume too.
I will have to get some more dvds or get downloading from winmx again