HDMI-ARC for Non -Techies Connect an Audio System to Smart TV (Part 1 of 4)

foreign [Music] Roger I'm a gadget guy and I want to help you get the best out of your home electronics and entertainment stuff today I'm going to talk about TV sound and how to improve it now as TVs have got thinner and thinner over the years the space for speakers have got less and less so TV sound has just got worse this is the first video in a four-part video series today we're going to talk about connecting any audio system up to a modern Smart TV if the things that I show you in this video don't work perfectly for you first time then watch my part two video where I will go over step-by-step troubleshooting for everything that I show you in this first video part three of this video series is going to cover audio connections to older TVs that is TVs that don't have the features that I'm going to talk about today and part four will be step-by-step troubleshooting of those older systems in this video series I'm going to show you how to connect any TV up to any audio system and I mean any audio system you might have a surround sound system or a sound bar or a pair of pallet bookshelf speakers or a lovely old vintage stereo that you don't use much anymore but you can't bear to part with or even a pair of computer speakers the one thing all of these audio systems have in common is they will sound so much better than the regular TV speakers that you'll wonder why you hadn't tried using them before you don't have to go out and buy anything new and fancy even a modest audio system can give dramatic Improvement in TV sound in fact it's likely that you already have something that can give excellent results a good setup will do three things firstly it's got to work equally well from any video Source whether it's a cable box an Apple TV box a DVD a Roku streaming bot or even an antenna secondly it must provide remote control of the volume from your couch whether or not the original audio system had its own remote control and thirdly it's got to be family friendly so that you don't get a phone call from a loved one while you're at work or out of town saying I can get a picture but I can't get sound before we get down to setting up systems I'm going to have to get you familiar with the kind of cables and connectors that we need there are three types of interconnect commonly used to connect TVs to audio gear the one that's right for you will depend on the age and the type of equipment that you have the latest Smart TVs can use an HDMI cable for their audio output connection this is exactly the same kind of cable that these TVs use for their video inputs they will have one of their HDMI connectors labeled with the magic letters Arc sometimes called Arc if your audio system also supports Arc or the newer e-arc this is the best system to use because the TV remote will also operate the audio system without reprogramming the remote and this connection supports all the latest advances in surround sound if you have a compatible receiver the connection most commonly found on flat screen TVs is the Optical Connection which may be labeled Optical toslink or spdif on your TV the connector is in the shape of a little house if you look at it end on although plugging this Cable in is a little fiddly Optical is a very simple and reliable method for stereo audio it also works for some surround sound formats RCA connections are very common on older TVs and some newer TVs still have them now that we've shown the three different types of connections let's get to work showing how a complete system goes together let's just say you've just bought home one of the latest and smartest of smart TVs this one here says on the box it has a billion intense colors astonishing detail and Clarity and blazing performance nothing on this box says anything about sound quality so there's no need to worry because connecting an audio system up to this TV is even easier than unpacking and recycling the box and setting up the TV itself first thing you need to do is determine if your audio system supports Arc not all receivers support Arc but this one does because it has the label arc on one of its HDMI connectors now any sound bar that has an HDMI connector not all of them have HDMI but any Soundbar that does have an HDMI connector will be Arc compatible and this one says it right here on the box then you have to find the special Arc socket on your TV and plug in a cable that's long enough to reach your audio gear already plugged into that socket then you need to move it whatever it is that's plugged in there will work just fine on one of the other sockets the audio won't you then take the other end of the cable that you've plugged into the TV and you plunk it into the clearly marked Arc socket this will also be marked TV output and then when you power everything up this may just work exactly as it should okay so now I'm going to power up the system using the TV remote with a bit of luck it will all work so the TV's powered on and the receiver powered on that's a really good sign now let's see if we get sound Bingo it's all working yay now let's push the mute so this is all working just fine if you have a recent TV and an audio system that supports Arc and that means either a sound bar with an HDMI connector or a surround sound system that's less than about 10 years old then you can pause the video right here and go off and try what I've showed you for the rest of you the next part of this video is for you so what do you do if you have an audio system that doesn't even have a remote control it certainly doesn't have any digital inputs well I have just the thing for you you can use one of these ARC Audio extractors and I'll put a link to where you can get it in the description of this video so this is connected up just like this you connect the power the other end of the power is a standard USB connector this can either plug into the back of the TV into one of the USB connectors on the TV or if your TV doesn't have an open USB connector this will just plug into a standard phone charging block you can then plug in an HDMI connector and then an audio cable and this goes white to white this is the standard RCA audio cable and red to red then you're ready to hook this up to your system now to connect our adapter up to the TV we take the power USB and we plug that into the USB socket suddenly goes in one way there we go and we take the HDMI cable and we plug it into the arc socket again only the arc socket will work the back panels of old 70s receivers are often very simple and unfortunately that means you don't have many inputs to play with you may already have a CD player or a Music Streamer hooked up to the AUX input even if it's open you never ever ever that's one never and two Evers use the phono input the reason for that is if you use it for a TV input or a CD or anything like that sound will be very loud and distorted a good input to use is the tape play so just plug the audio cable from your adapter in red to red and white to white and then you're good to go so let's try it and see if it all works on this old receiver I had to turn it on manually push the tape button to select the TV input and set the volume to about halfway now if you're only using it for watching TV you can just leave these settings the way they are and use the TV remote and turn the TV on and let's get some programming [Music] and it just works for injuries and illness caused by toxic water you may be a child so the TV mute works the volume control works and we've effectively turned this old receiver into a modern digital receiver if you've tried what I've just shown you and it didn't work for you first time the most likely reason is that there are two features on the TV that are often turned off in the TV menus those two features are Arc audio return Channel and CEC which is consumer electronics control now you can Google how to turn those two features on for your particular brand of TV or you can watch my part 2 video where I'll go through TV menus those two features and step-by-step troubleshooting in much more detail if your audio system does have its own remote control but doesn't support HDMI ARC then the best kind of connection to use is going to be an optical connection and I'm going to cover that kind of connection in much more detail in the part 3 video when I talk about Connections to older TVs so now you know how to connect a modern Smart TV to any audio system no matter how old or unsophisticated in part three I'll describe in detail how to do the same for an older TV some might call them dumb TVs but most of them still work and look great and a decent audio system makes them even more enjoyable if you like this video and found it helpful then give me a thumbs up if you want to see future video guides from me then please click on subscribe and you'll be notified of new videos if you need to buy any of the cables or adapters that I mentioned today look under the description and click on the more and you'll see links to the products that I've covered in this video if you click on those links and buy through those links it won't cost you any more but it will help to support this Channel and I'll be able to buy more devices that I can test and then pass on to you how to get the best out of them well that's all I had for today thank you so much for watching

Channel: Roger Gadget Guy

Views: 418,190

Keywords: Home Theater, Connect Stereo to a TV

Id: LYu2TM1v6Ws

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 28 2022