Zones in a Sony Home Theater System

[SoundDude]

This may be a stupid question but if I have speakers in my house running off my Sony 7.1 A/V receiver's speaker B setting and want to use the speaker A setting for my Home theater.
My question is, will my TV's speakers still run sound when my A/V receiver is set to speaker B and playing music in the house (and not sending sound to the Speaker A output?
Since this Sony system does not support multi-zones, I'm like to try for a work around. We only need the two zones going (TV home theater and the other house speakers).
This won't be a common issue but if we have a party and the kids want to watch TV and we want to have music for our guests, we'd like to have them both simultaneously playing.
Cheers,
SoundDude

 

[Phil Taylor]

I would think that your TV speakers are independent of what your AVR is producing - unless you have your TV connected to your AVR via a digital audio cable and have that input selected as the source on your AVR. If you are watching cable on TV and have say FM radio or CD selected on your AVR you will get radio or CD on your "B side" speakers.

 

[SoundDude]

Thanks PT,
just to clarify because I'm slower than most life forms,
so if my TV is getting it's signal through my cable box (in my case Comcast) and the Comcast box is hooked to the AVR, does that mean the TV's speakers will still work independently when the speakers are switched to speaker B for the other room?
If not, how does one hook up a TV as part of a Home Theater system (HTS) using the surround sound speakers without going through the AVR? The Sony manual shows that the TV should be hooked directly to the AVR.
I'm trying to save my self from buying an addtl. receiver dedicated to the TV's HTS as it seems it should be possible.
On a side note, how does a multi-zone system allow you to play different music on different sets of speakers through one AVR?

 

[Phil Taylor]

If your TV is getting its signal thru your AVR it may (quite possibly - depending on your model AVR) not allow you to watch TV and listen to another source. I was going on the assumption (apparently faulty) that you were running video to your TV and had separate audio to your AVR as well as your TV i.e. video to TV, analog audio to TV and digital audio to AVR <--- which is what you would need to make it work for your purposes.

Multi-zone AVRs can only feed different and separate (and usually only analog) sources to the number of zone outputs they have. A lot of receivers offer one additional zone, some offer two and very few offer three zones. If you need multiple, individually fed zones you may want to look into a multi-zone distribution device - such as the DLA system from ATON or an A-BUS type system if you already have Cat5 run to your zones.

 

[Phil Taylor]

BTW - the ATON DLA uses regular speaker wire - an A-BUS system (there are many manufacturers using the A-BUS protocol) uses Cat5 - just a clarification. The DLA system is pretty slick too with the ability to have different sources simultaneously in each zone and a "scene set" with an RF remote option available.