Newbie install questions

[openwydr]

I an a newbie here.

I am having a 2ndary system put into my house, my kids use the main theatre all of the time for movies and video games so I never get to use it.
Following are the components:

Yamaha RXV 661
Paradigm in cieling speakers ( 7.1)
Paradigm Ultra Cube sub woofer
DVD player undecided as to whether I am going to use an older model Pioneer Elite DVD/Tivo or get soemething new. ( Gotta cut costs somewhere)
Pioneer 5080HD Plasma
I have had a company run the wires and all I can see run are speaker wires and cat5 wires. As we are getting to install time I am looking at the wiring and trying to get a basic understanding of the system.

Questions I have are as follows

1. When I look at the wiring I see an HDMI cable ( I ran this ) and Cat 5 cables, no coax for the antenna.
I would like to use the cablecard option on the 5080- do I need a direct coax connection to the tv for this?

2. HDMI connections
Tv will be hooked to Reciever via HDMI, does the DVD and or cablebox have to be connected to the reciever via HDMI to be compatible? If so is there a component to HDMI converter?

3. How will the cat 5 wires bring the video and audio from the components to tv. What will they connect to?

Thanks for helping me to understand what is going on with this system.

SB

 

[MDS]

1. When I look at the wiring I see an HDMI cable ( I ran this ) and Cat 5 cables, no coax for the antenna.
I would like to use the cablecard option on the 5080- do I need a direct coax connection to the tv for this?

Yes. The cable card just replaces the set top box to do things like unscramble pay channels. You still need to get the cable feed from the outside to the TV's tuner.

2. HDMI connections
Tv will be hooked to Reciever via HDMI, does the DVD and or cablebox have to be connected to the reciever via HDMI to be compatible? If so is there a component to HDMI converter?

If the receiver can transcode (sometimes called 'upconvert') from analog video formats, like component video, then you wouldn't need an HDMI output on every other device connected to the receiver but you would need an optical or coax digital connection to get the sound.

3. How will the cat 5 wires bring the video and audio from the components to tv. What will they connect to?

There are solutions for running audio and video over CAT5 but typically they would be run to support phone or network capabilities. It is just wire and can be used for anything - like keypads or remote control. It likely wasn't intended to be used for audio and video.