Hooking up my AVR-Does This Make Sense

[double d]

Firstly, hi to everyone, been reading this forum extensively the past couple of weeks, I decided to buy a 5.1 system. Have a question for you, it may seem silly but I have to ask. So I wanted to buy a surround system as I just purchased a 46" tv, almost bought a HTIB but after much research found out that wasn't the way to go, decide to buy POLK instead as many good things were said about Polk on various internet forums.

I couldn't spend a lot of cash but wanted to buy something that would sound good. Bought a HK 147 receiver, 4 R 150's, a CS1 center and a PSW 303 sub.

My question is as follows; I know receivers are designed to use both audio and video however my HD tv picture is perfect, why would I want to hook up any video to my receiver? I'm thinking that all I would have to do is hook up 2 optical audio cables, one from my cable box to the reciever and one from my DVD player to the receiver as well. I would also be using a HDMI connection from the DVD to the tv. All I really bought the receiver for is to power my surround system. Would this work or would anybody have any other ideas how to simplify my connections? Hopefully I'll be on here often, already have the upgrade bug but will have to wait until I have more spare cash. Thanks in advance.

[greg2350]

Should work fine thats how I have mine setup.

[danger boy]

you don't have to use your AVR for video at all.. just continue to use it as you are... be sure to run the auto calibration with a microphone if your AVR has one.. it will make setting up the speaker levels really easy.

good luck and welcome to club Polk !

[double d]

thanks, that's what i was hoping, haven't got it yet but will try when I do.

[seeclear]

The only reason I can think of to run the hdmi through your receiver would be to have multiple inputs (like DVD + HD cable/satellite) with just one cable to input to the TV. If you only have DVD to run hdmi to the set, or if the set has multiple inputs, you have no need to run hdmi through the receiver.
;)

[Erik Tracy]

If you are into Home Theater and Hi Def and you want to take advantage of the audio capabilities in Blu Ray or even HD-DVD, then you may want to reconsider using your AVR for video and audio because of how audio content is passed over HDMI.

If you only use optical connections to your avr, you won't be able to send the newer lossless audio streams such as TrueHD or DTS HDMA or even multichannel PCM, because optical will not support these - it must be over HDMI.

And because the video AND audio content is sent over the same HDMI connection, the 'chain' would normally be from Blu Ray player to AVR to HDTV. The audio content is then either decoded or sent as is (PCM) thru the AVR to your speakers while the video content is stripped off and sent to your HDTV over HDMI.

If your player has separate analog outs for 7.1 or 5.1, then you may be able to use your planned configuration, but, despite HDCP and the anamolies of HDMI, it is more flexible than separate connections and consolidates the number of connections between gear.

Just tossing that out for consideration.

Erik