How I Hooked Up My New HDTV to My Home Theater

After the tragic loss of my last television to fire and smoke, I found myself shopping for a new TV a couple of weeks ago. After doing the requisite research to decide what set to buy--I ended up with a Panasonic   TC-P58VT25--I thought the hard work was over. But no, I had to figure out the best way to integrate my new TV with my home theater system. 

After a few false starts and a couple of important lessons, here's how I've integrated my new TV with all the other stuff that was already in my entertainment center.

First, I should explain my basic setup. I have all my electronics gear hidden away in a cabinet, which doubles as my TV stand. That stand has three compartments, left, right, and center. I'd already added temperature controlled fans to the left and right compartments--the middle compartment, where I keep the TiVo doesn't get too hot and is better ventilated than the others--and I use a universal remote, the Harmony 890, to control devices inside the cabinet using a combination of RF transmitters and IR blasters. 

My old setup required a component switcher and an incredible snarl of cables inside the cabinet, but it worked great, even though it was held together with duct tape and baling twine. When I hit the Play Xbox button on the Harmony, it would set the appropriate inputs on the TV, amp, and component video switcher, so I never needed to think about any of that stuff. It was very wife-friendly and awesome. With the TV upgrade, I had hoped to simplify that snarl of cables, both inside the cabinet and out. Ideally, I wanted just a cable or two running between the cabinet and the TV, which should have been relatively simple. After all, HDMI carries both video and audio across a single cable. 

I knew I was going to have a few problems before I even started. My receiver, a 2002 vintage JVC model, supported component switching, but it doesn't speak HDMI at all. That didn't seem like a problem though, since my TV includes an optical output, which I assumed I'd be able to connect directly to my receiver and still experience the wonders of 5.1 positional audio. Yes, the optical S/PDIF connection couldn't handle TrueHD 7.1 sound or any of the new uncompressed formats, but that's fine with me, since my receiver can't either. 

With that in mind, my plan seemed straightforward. I put a power strip, a 5-port, HDMI 1.4-compatible switcher, and an Ethernet switch in the center cabinet, then ran power, Ethernet, and a single HDMI cable to all the other devices in the cabinet. I ran the output from the HDMI switcher up to the TV (along with an Ethernet cable), and ran a Toslink optical S/PDIF cable from the TV back to the receiver. 

To control all this stuff, I placed the IR blaster for the Harmony remote in the center cabinet as well, and ran the IR blasters to all the devices that work with IR--the Xbox, Apple TV, receiver, HDMI switcher, and TiVo. I bought the $40 Harmony Adapter for PS3, so that I can turn the PlayStation on and off using my remote, and I placed that in the center cabinet as well. Assuming I did everything properly, the Harmony should be able to control every component in the system (except the Boxee Box), the HDMI switcher will pass the appropriate video and audio signal through to the TV, and the the TV would return audio to the amp. I measured my cable runs, then bought the shortest cables that would work for each run from Monoprice.com along with the aforementioned HDMI switcher.

When the cables arrived, I broke down the old setup, cleaned out the cabinet, and then reconnected everything. At first glance, everything seemed OK, but I quickly found a couple of problems. By piping all my video sources into one TV input, I couldn't automatically change my TV between different display presets. The display presets change the color settings, brightness, contrast, and all that jazz you normally set once and never adjust. Unfortunately, the display presets also impact latency--so switching to a game preset is super-important for someone who plays video games. That meant every time I switched between a game console and another type of input, I had to manually change the display preset. Not awesome. 

Worse, after watching a movie or two, I realized that I wasn't getting 5.1 audio from any of the devices in my system. After isolating components (and digging out the long-unused manual for my receiver), I realized the problem. No matter what audio format it was fed over HDMI, my new TV only output a 2-channel, linear PCM signal to the receiver. Thought the TVs documentation made no mention of this limitation, a quick search of the Internet revealed that this is a limitation common to almost all TVs. D'oh.

A new strategy was in order. First, I disconnected the game consoles from the HDMI switcher and ran separate runs to the TV for each one. The Harmony remote will handle the heavy lifting of changing the TVs inputs when I switch between devices, and I can set both the PS3 and Xbox 360 input to Game mode, while leaving the input the switcher is connected to on my calibrated preset. I managed to solve one problem, but only by adding much more cable clutter to the back of my TV, and only by filling three out of four of the precious HDMI ports on my TV. 

The 5.1 audio problem was a tougher nut to crack. After considering my options, I ended up running optical S/PDIFs from the components that I wanted positional audio from--the PlayStation 3 and AppleTV--directly to my receiver. Yes, I had to run some more cables and set up the Harmony remote to automatically change inputs on my receiver. Making the Harmony do this is simple and transparent to the end user, so that wasn't a problem. The only downside is that there are still more cables running through my cabinet. Yes, they're out of sight, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're out of mind. 

At the end of a week-long adventure, I finally have everything connected properly and working as I'd expect. I have 5.1 positional audio for the devices that need it. I have a couple of extra HDMI and Ethernet leads in the center cabinet, for easy addition of future devices. The inputs the consoles use are set at the appropriate game setting. But, most importantly, the whole mish-mash is wife-friendly, thanks to the Harmony remote. When you pick up the Harmony and press the button to start a task--whether it's play Xbox, watch a Blu-ray, or stream music from the Apple TV, everything works exactly as anticipated, every single time. And that's truly something to be thankful for. 

To recap, here's what I learned:

• Mapping your cable runs in advance is a good idea. 
• Run HDMI through the receiver to the TV for maximum sound quality.
• If your amp doesn't support HDMI, run optical cables directly from the components to the amp.
• Most HDTV's don't output 5.1 sound through the optical out. However, it's still useful for devices that don't necessarily need 5.1 sound.
• Run HDMI cables directly to the TV for devices where latency is important (game consoles, mostly).
• I didn't need to replace my amp with one that supports HDMI, if I didn't already have a Harmony, getting a good remote to manage the config would be cheaper than upgrading the amp.
• Running power, Ethernet, and HDMI into a central location in the cabinet makes adding new devices a snap.
• Color coding my HDMI and Ethernet cables  by length would have been clever. Making 3-foot cables orange, 5-foot cables blue, and 10 foot cables black would make organizing them much easier. 
• Some devices don't work with IR remotes. Sometimes this is fixable, but sometimes it isn't. 

 
What are your best tips for setting up a new HDTV with an existing home theater setup?