Need help with kenwood VR-405

[thawk21]

My brother just gave his old Kenwood VR-405 reciever and speakers that he has never used. I am new to surround sound equipment and have a few noob questions. How do you connect the surround sound setup to your TV? Do you need a cord that comes from the TV to hook up to the reciever or does it go from my satellite reciever to the kenwood reciever? I am just confused on how all of this works. Thanks for your help and sorry for the noob questions.

 

[thawk21]

would just an optical digital audio cord be enough?

 

[Adam]

Welcome to the forum!

My guess is that your best connection will be from the satellite receiver straight to the Kenwood. If your satellite receiver has an optical audio output, then that would be a great choice. You could also use a digital coax connection if your satellite receiver has an output for that. Either one would be enough to carry full surround sound from the satellite receiver to the Kenwood. Do you listen to anything else via the TV besides the satellite channels?

 

[thawk21]

The digital audio port is the Orange port right? And the only thing I would use it for besides satellite and blue ray (HDMI) and xbox 360 (which is component, not HDMI)

To add another twist to this problem. I am looking into getting an HD projector. And on the 2 projectors they only have HDMI, S video, and Component. Am I just out of luck or would there be anything I could do?

 

[Adam]

The digital audio port is the Orange port right?

The digital coax port is orange - correct.

And the only thing I would use it for besides satellite and blue ray (HDMI) and xbox 360 (which is component, not HDMI)

I recommend that you run the audio directly to the receiver. Your TV most likely will downconvert HDMI audio input to two-channel stereo for output from it's audio outputs. If so, then you'll get much better performance by connecting the blu-ray player audio directly to the receiver (I still recommend using an HDMI connection to the TV for the video quality, though).

 

[thawk21]

My question is how do I connect the audio to my reciever since the reciever does not have HDMI?


Ok, I think I may have it. I could connect the satellite receiver and blue ray to projector through HDMI and Xbox 360 through HD Component cable. And then connect the audio for all 3 to the Kenwood receiver through optical digital audio cable. Would that work? This is starting to drive me crazy!!!

 

[Adam]

I could connect the satellite receiver and blue ray to projector through HDMI and Xbox 360 through HD Component cable. And then connect the audio for all 3 to the Kenwood receiver through optical digital audio cable. Would that work?

You've got the right idea! That Kenwood only has two optical inputs, I think. If so, you could use digital coax (the orange connector) for one of those three components if any of them have one of those.

 

[thawk21]

Wow, this has been bugging me all night. Now I can actually go to sleep. Thank you very much for your help.

 

[Lordoftherings]

Wow, this has been bugging me all night. Now I can actually go to sleep. Thank you very much for your help.

Hope that you sleep nice and tight, and for many nights too.

* And Thank you Adam, for helping this nice young fellow.

Bob