I have an aspire DVD/Kareoke, etc DVD player attached to my 42" Mag HD Plasma. I bought a cheap home theater in the box this week and it was basically a DVD player with six audio outputs, a powered sub woofer and 5 speakers. I noticed when I was unhooking my aspire that it too has all the same outputs on the back. I hooked the new speakers to the old aspire and it worked. So I wondered if I could go cheaper, by just buying a subwoofer/speaker set without the new DVD thrown in. Has anyone seen sets of speakers sold without the DVD or receiver?
Second, I could get sound out of the home theater speakers when playing a DVD but not when playing the TV. I have an HD cable box with component outputs. The cable video outs went to the TV, I hooked the cable audio to the DVD player via an optical cable. I hooked the DVD video out to the TV using component cable and of course the audio out to the sub woofer on the home theater. When I couldn't get sound from the cable box I took it back to Best Buy until I figured all this out. I got to thinking that maybe to get the sound from the cable box to the TV via that optical cable maybe there was a menu setup on the TV that I was supposed to configure for home theater?
This is all new to me and I must admit that the instructions that \\came with the TV and the Home theater are severely lacking.