Need some help setting up my place for college

[KhanSphere]

Dynex 26 inch LCD HDTV 720p
DX-LCD26-09
Insignia 26 inch LCD HDTV 720p
NS-LTDVD26-09
Logitech X-540 5.1 Surround Sound
-Found on Logitech website

The two TVs are what I plan on using, and I have those speakers. The TV will be connected to my computer, my xbox, my cable, and my wii at college. I have components for the wii and the xbox. VGA or HDMI or something will be used for my computer, most likely VGA(unfortunately). I need to know how to, with the three microphone-like inputs from the surround sound(front, rear, and sub/center), get all of those items to connect to the surround sound, and fairly cheaply.

The two TVs can be found on the Best Buy page, I can't post links without 5 posts.

 

[Gimpy Ric]

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/

 

[jvgillow]

Is your PC going to be turned on all the time? If so you can probably find a sound card that offers digital input and a couple analog inputs like the SB X-Fi Elite. The Xbox should be digital for 5.1 surround but the Wii is of course analog stereo audio. If your cable box is HD and has digital output then hopefully it is digital coaxial. That way you can use the sound card optical input for the Xbox and the coax input for the cable box. If both are optical you would have to convert one or just use stereo.

Otherwise you'll need a receiver with preamp outputs and enough inputs for you 4 sources. Preamp outputs are RCA so you'll need 3 converter cables from stereo RCA to female phono 1/8".

 

[KhanSphere]

Is your PC going to be turned on all the time? If so you can probably find a sound card that offers digital input and a couple analog inputs like the SB X-Fi Elite. The Xbox should be digital for 5.1 surround but the Wii is of course analog stereo audio. If your cable box is HD and has digital output then hopefully it is digital coaxial. That way you can use the sound card optical input for the Xbox and the coax input for the cable box. If both are optical you would have to convert one or just use stereo.

Otherwise you'll need a receiver with preamp outputs and enough inputs for you 4 sources. Preamp outputs are RCA so you'll need 3 converter cables from stereo RCA to female phono 1/8".

It's coaxial, on the digital cable. How would I get (surround sound/at least have it play out of the speakers) out of it though, considering that the cable must go to the TV to give it video? Would the TV have to have an audio output area too? That makes sense if so. Would I be able to just hook up all the stuff from the wii and xbox to the TV, and just run audio output from the TV to a nicer sound card like you mentioned? I really don't give much of a care right now to whether the sound system is 5.1 or just running off stereo, as long as all of the audio actually makes it through the speakers and all of the speakers are emitting some nice sound. It has a Matrix button that turns stereo into surround(not realistically of course, just like different audio coming from different areas), so that should work for changing the stereo to crap-surround right?

Basically can I just run audio out of the TV to the computer and have everything else plugged into the TV?

 

[KhanSphere]

If anyone could possibly look at bestbuy's page for the Dynex and Insignia, it seems that the dynex has no audio output(TOSLINK) while the insignia does? That's according to the spec-sheet. On the back of the dynex there is an audio connection available, but I don't know if it's input or output.

 

[jvgillow]

If you don't care about real Dolby Digital / DTS surround sound and just want to use the matrix mode, then just run everything to the TV with stereo RCA cables and then use the Aux output on the TV to go to the sound card line input. You will still need the computer to be turned on to hear sound on the speakers. With this connection method you can pick the input device (cable, wii, xbox) with the TV remote and don't have to change any settings on the PC.

If you do want true 5.1 audio then you need to hook the digital audio connections directly up to a receiver or sound card. Then you would select the proper video input for the TV and separately on the PC (or receiver) you would select the proper input for the audio.

The toslink digital output on TV sets is normally only used for over-the-air ATSC or QAM HD broadcasts. If you have a digital cable or satellite receiver it should have its own digital audio output, you don't need one on the TV.

 

[KhanSphere]

What Aux output? From the TV that is.

Also the PCI Express® Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Xtreme Audio sound card has a TOSLINK input. So if the TV will output the audio from it's toslink and to the soundcard that, it'd be great.

 

[KhanSphere]

I know some computer monitors have speakers and I'm assuming the audio signal for those comes through the vga/dvi. Would another option be to have the audio all run into the tv and the tv send it to the speakers? That seems like a lot less runaround.