Connecting PC to TV - audio

[TVNoob]

Hi, I have just ordered an Aquos LCD TV which will be ordered tomorrow. I will connect up the video from my PC using component (y, u, v) from my Geforce card.

However I am not so sure how to connect the audio. I have line out, speaker out and obviously I could connect this directly to the TV using the red/white L R jacks. However I would prefer to go digital.. on my ASUS motherboard (integrated sound) I have

SPDIF out

printed above a an optical connector and a yellow jack-style connector.

Can I hook this up to my TV? The range of inputs on the TV is below

Video input (3 sets)
S2 video input
D5 video input (3 sets)
HDMI input (3 sets)
DVI?I input (with audio input jack)
Monitor output (combined with S2 jack, doubles as video input 2 and recording output jack)
Headphone output
Digital audio output (optical)
i.LINK (TS) S400 (2 sets)
B?CAS card slot
VHF/UHF antenna input
BS/CS110° antenna input
Telephone line (2,400bps)
LAN (10Base-T/100Base-TX)
Center speaker input
Controller (RS232C)
AC power input


taken from the spec sheet on this page (model is LC-52GX4W)

http://www.sharp-world.com/corporate/news/070702.html

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Welcome to AT.

It doesn't look like you have digital audio inputs on your TV.

It's a shame that you have a nice 52" 1080p display but you're planning on using the speakers integrated into that display.

What's the purpose of this computer / display combo? If games / movies are a priority, then I would highly recommend trying to fit a sound system into the mix, even if it's an inexpensive HTIB type setup.

 

[TVNoob]

Hiya... thanks for the quick welcome & answer!

I will be watching movies from my PC on this, and streaming sports feeds from the net.... I will consider a sound system but I was a bit baffled by the options in the store, especially since I'm in Japan and can't read Japanese.

I presume I just need S/P DIF in on the sound system (to connect the PC to) and whatever this "Digital audio output (optical)" type of connector from the TV has.... knid of annoying the TV doesn't have it built in anyway. I guess Sharp justify it by saying most purchasers of the TV will have a separate sound system....

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

The real benefit to digital is being able to transmit a surround sound signal anyway, so having a digital input to a set of integrated stereo speakers isn't a really important feature.

I do have an introduction to sound systems thread stickied in this area, but I'm not sure how much of it applies to what's available in Japan.

 

[TVNoob]

Cheers I will give it a look. I was a bit concerned about inference in the cable since I will run it over 3-5m from PC to TV which is why optical appealed... I will try it tomorrow and see how it sounds!

Then I will be back reading up on external peaker options ;-)

 

[TVNoob]

I am thinking about the Sony HT-SF200 HTiB system..... but I would really like to find a HTiN which has a Blu Ray player embedded instead of a DVD player. I guess this type of product doesn't exist yet....

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Did you test it out? I'm not sure what your options are, but here in the US, Sony doesn't really tend to be that strong of a choice for HTIB options. Onkyo makes good bang for the buck HTIB sets over here, and many of them do not include a DVD player with them.

If you're set on a Blu Ray player, there should be HTIB options that do not include a DVD player and you'd be able to add whatever kind of players you want into the system.

 

[cubby1223]

Do not use component from the PC. Get a dvi > hdmi cable.

 

[TVNoob]

I didn't get the TV yet, will be delivered tonight. Pretty excited!

I looked at the Onkyo sets, but they all seemed to be wooden.. I would prefer something silver/black to match the rest of the room. I know this is not exactly choosing products on their best feature set but wooden cases would look really out of place in my lounge!

cubby1223 - I have only one DVI output on my card (Geforce 6800)... would I need a DVI splitter to output this both to my PC monitor and TV?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Yeah, most decent speakers are going to be made of MDF with some kind of veneer / coating on top of them. Often times that's going to be a fake wood-grain sort of finish on them.

So the Sony ones are made of plastic then? Yeah, that's not really a good thing, but if that's the only option that you think would work for you, a plastic HTIB from Sony is still going to be a lot better than the TV's speakers.

 

[TVNoob]

I didn't think about this before I brought the TV... now I find as well as an expensive TV I need a Blu Ray player or an up scaling DVD player at a minimum.. and a decent sound system with HDMI passthrough for Video and which will pick up audio from it... so many choices!!!

I am also thinking of getting a Blu Ray DVD drive for my PC, and a good graphics card with HDMI or DVI out and going for that combo.... not sure if this is recommended or not?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

With the PC solution, I don't think it's possible to get the HD audio tracks off the discs? I haven't really been keeping up on it though.

That's not really a huge deal if you're going to be playing them back on a basic setup though anyway.

Here in the US, a receiver that will do the HD audio formats will run about $400 on its own already.

 

[TVNoob]

Update - got the TV last night and it rocks!!! Looks really nice, and thats only using component cables and 720p downloaded movies. There is no "component" input as such on the TV, but I figured out the jacks are the same as the standard video ones of yellow (video) and red/white (left/right audio).

So I plugged them in, and after a few grey picures I swopped them around until it finally hit the right connections and the Y u and v are connected up nicely now. I will investigate digital options (HDMI) but will need to update my PC graphicss card first.

The only thing I couldnt get working was the sound. Any advice would be gratefully received. I used the a cable that has a 3.5jack to red/white left/right RCA connectors. The 3.5mm jack went into the line out (1st) and the headphone socket (2nd) on my PC.

There were two places to plug into on the TV, 2 sets of yellow/red/white connectors remaining after I used 1 set for the component video. However neither of these produced sound... I tried scrolling through all the options to see if I could select a "sound source" and tell the TV which input to use. This didn't work though.... I get sound on the regular TV channels and the PC is definitely outputting sound but I can't get it working on the TV.

Any ideas? The manual is 100% Japanese..... but the on screen menu is in English

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: TVNoob
There is no "component" input as such on the TV, but I figured out the jacks are the same as the standard video ones of yellow (video) and red/white (left/right audio).

I'm not really familiar with Japanese video standards, but you're sure you have it hooked up correctly?

I tried to find a manual online for the TV but I'm not having much luck.

Could you take a picture of the back of the TV showing the inputs?

 

[TVNoob]

Sure, I will do when I go home... thanks for all the help!

 

[TVNoob]

I have three sets of inputs like this, labelled Input 1, Input 2 and Input 3 (they each have an S-video connector too). There is 1 yellow RCA jack, one red and one white.... the photo below shows 2 yellows, 2 reds, 2 whites but each input bank on my TV has one of each.

http://www.vgmusic.com/faq/gallery/jacks/j-RCA(AV).jpg

I was expecting one input to have the same connectors, but be labelled red, green, blue to match my component video cable. Eventually I worked out they might be saving money and have some kind of auto-sensing technology to figure out what type of cable/signal was connecting to these ports.

I tried a few combinations of to see which colour should go into each jack, and the wrong combinations gave me no picture or greyscale picture (as expected, since component video is one brightness signal and two chroma signals). In the end I got a nice full colour picture like this.

So to get the audio working, I tried putting the red/white RCA plugs into the correct sockets on Input 2 and then Input 3. However this didn't work..... my guess is you can't combine a video signal with one input bank with an audio signal from another input bank.

But - that begs the question - how are you meant to use component video and have an accompanying audio signal?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

That's pretty messed up if they don't allow you to do that.

So what resolution are you sending to the TV? (I'm sure you'd be able to tell that it looked really crappy sending a 480i composite video signal, but I just want to make sure that's not what ended up working for you )

 

[TVNoob]

I am pretty sure its going to the TV at 1024x768.... thats what the GFX card driver was implying, and it wouldnt let me set it any higher.

I run my PC screen at 1900x1200 but I don't think it will allow the same quality signal to be same to the 2nd display. Probably doesn't have enough processing power to do two signals (the 2nd display seems to be driven indepedently of the main display, since I can have the movie minimized in Windows XP and it still plays properly full screen on the TV).

I'm looking around for a card that will do two high resolution outputs now!

 

[TVNoob]

Almost decided on

http://www.sonystyle.com/webap...Id=8198552921665238643

for the HTiB... you can see the connections layout by selecting the specifications tab. Has two digital optical inputs so I think this means I can hook out the SP DIF connection from my sound card straight to this.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Keep in mind that gaming over a digital audio connection from a computer (if you plan to do so) can have some issues
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...1=digital+audio+thread

Sending a composite signal, some comptuers will let you send "1024x768" that it scales down to a 480i signal via composite and you'd get a picture that works, but it would still be 480i. It would look terrible though, so if you can clearly read text etc, then you're probably fine.

You might try running just the TV as a single monitor and see if you can get the resolution higher just to make sure it's a computer / videocard problem rather than a limit on the TV.

 

[TVNoob]

Thanks I will try that. The TV can definitely do 1080p so I'm sure it's not a TV problem but no harm to have a fiddle

For the optical output, I guess I need to check my motherboard manual to see if it sens PCM or encoded DD/DTS over the optical output? If its just stereo over an digital link it's time for me to buy a sound card I guess.

I can have these outputs from the mobo: digital co-ax, SPDIF or 5 individual analogue lines... obviously I would prefer to connect to the AV receiver with a single wire...

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Yeah, and the encoding issue only matters if you want to do gaming.

 

[TVNoob]

Hmm I don't want to do gaming, but wouldnt it affect DVD playback too?

If I play a DVD on my PC and route it to the TV (video) and Av receiver/HTIB then surely I need the audio route to have the encoded signal to squirt the sound to the correct speakers? Otherwise I've just have stereo sound through the 5.1 speakers?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Did you check out the link to the other thread? If your material is already encoded to DD / DTS (like a DVD movie), your computer just needs to send along the stream. Any digital output from a soundcard or motherboard should be able to do that just fine.

No need to ENcode DD / DTS if the source is already encoded.

 

[TVNoob]

I got it all up together now - thanks for the assistance.... pretty happy now!!!!