Cheers!
Hi guys,
@ JoeE: Thanks for your reply! I have a Hansol 920D 19" monitor running at 1280x1024 standard resolution. My graphics card is an ATI Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro. It has TV-out capability and is supplied with a cable. Unfortunately I dont know the technical names for these cables so Ill describe them as best I can. On the back of the graphics card there is a circular "female" connection with lots (10 - 15 maybe) pin holes on it. There is also a retangular female connection - the holes in it are squares arranged in two rows.
My TV is a "Black Diamond" - I think its a bit old and Im fairly sure its made by Mitsubishi. On the back the connections are as follows: There are two rows of female "phono" sockets. One of the rows is in, the other is out, and they are coloured red, white and yellow (left, right and video right?). There are also two SCART sockets - labelled SCART I and SCART II even though I think they are identical (?!). Strangely there are two other panels labelled with "+" and "-" symbols, with S, S and 0 written above them - the panel is covered with plastic which suggests that my model of TV isnt flash enough to have this feature.
@ AV_phile: thats very much for your reply. I have read the manual to my motherboard and discovered that it does indeed have this S/PDIF (whatever that is!) on the back and if I alter the software settings and connect the cables in the correct fashion it will give 6 channel sound, as you have said in your second paragraph.
So just to be clear, if the DVD is outputting SPDIF format sound, and the motherboard is doing the same....and the speakers are "expecting" SPDIF sound i need a switch that can flick between either of two SPDIF inputs to its single SPDIF output? I think that might be hard to find but Ill have a look - I just wanted to double check that Im after the right thing!
Another question about the cables if I may...I want to be sure Im thinking correctly about all of the different abbreviations. The SPDIF is the "format" that the sound is supplied by the devices is, but RCA is the type of cable required. From what I can understand from your post, the DVD output sound will be one cable. however the output from my motherboard requires all three pins (3 cables?!) to be in use to deliver the sound.
Im afraid Im still slightly confused about all of the connections/types of connection required to make this work!
So far I think its supposed to go something like this:
VIDEO:
DVD will be SCART from DVD to TV if the DVD has scart. If not it will be S-video (thats the round yellow one?!) to s-video.
DVD AUDIO will be SPDIF RCA coaxial cable from DVD to the switch.
PC AUDIO is where i get confused. I think it will be three headphone pins out of the motherboard but has to somehow connect to this switch.
THE SWITCH will have to accept the SPDIF RCA thing from the DVD and somehow the motherboards three cables and give an output of this RCA SPDIF to go into the speakers.
Sound anywhere close to correct?!
Thanks for any more help anyone can offer,
Porky