How to setup an AV Receiver // Home Theater Basics

hey everyone welcome back to the channel i'm rob and if you're thinking about putting together your first home theater you're gonna need a receiver today on home theater basics we're gonna learn what an av receiver does and how to hook one up right after the intro [Music] alright so the first thing we need to understand is what exactly a receiver does basically a receiver takes an input like a blu-ray player or an apple tv and it splits the input signal across every part of your home theater like your speakers and your projector you can also use a receiver to switch between different inputs amplify the signal going to your speakers and run speaker equalization but that's something we'll discuss in a future video in the end a receiver does the job of an hdmi switch a digital analog converter an audio processor a radio tuner and a multi-channel amplifier all in one box all right so with that out of the way let's take a look at what a receiver actually looks like this is a harman kardon avr 354 7.1 channel home theater receiver that i'll be using as an example now on the front of the receiver the most important thing here is the screen it can tell you information like current volume level input and what audio format you're actually in some other controls that you might find useful are the configuration and navigation buttons which is something we'll discuss in a future video and off to one side of the receiver there are a few auxiliary inputs and even a headphone jack all right so going around the back of the receiver this is where a lot of your important setup is going to happen this might look a little intimidating but don't worry about it for most setups you only have to worry about these parts of the receiver but i'll cover all of these inputs and outputs so you'll know what you need for your setup alright so let's start at the top these hdmi connectors are going to be the most important part of the entire system and we'll discuss these different types of cables and connectors in a future video hdmi is the same connector that you'll find on your playstation xbox apple tv blu-ray player and a massive number of other devices it's a really simple connector that you can transmit both video and audio on now when it comes to your receiver you'll usually have one or two outputs and several inputs this receiver has a single output and three inputs so generally if you're looking to buy a new receiver we recommend getting one with at least six of these hdmi inputs which should be more than enough for all of your devices once you have all your hdmi devices connected and ready to go it's time to connect your speakers these big colorful connectors which are called binding post each represent a single channel in your surround sound setup and we have seven pairs in total on this receiver these are the actual amplified speaker outputs you can connect your speaker in a couple different ways either by screwing the wire down into the binding post or using banana plugs now tightening the wire down is really easy just unscrew the posts until the gap is big enough to fit your wire through put the wire in and tighten them down as tight as you can and you're good to go now your speaker wire is going to have two sides a positive and a negative so make sure you keep track of them or when you hook up your speakers you could wire them wrong and make your speakers sound kind of weird just make the same connection for each speaker and voila you're done alright so next let's talk about pre-outs these regular rca connectors actually output the same signal as binding posts but it's line level rather than speaker level these are the connectors you're going to need if you're connecting external amplifiers to your receiver or if you want to connect a subwoofer the rest of the connectors on the receiver are really actually pretty easy to explain these are stereo audio inputs so if you have an ipod or a cd player with red and white rca connectors just match up the red and white connectors on the cable to the red and white connectors on the receiver these connectors here are composite and s-video connectors which are both obsolete video formats used on old dvd players and vcrs these red green and blue connectors are for component video which is used on some older hd tvs and game consoles but we recommend using hdmi if you can because it's much easier to set up these orange connectors and the square connectors next to them are digital audio connectors specifically their coaxial and toslink which can usually be found on most tvs designed for use with sound bars and now i'll go ahead and mention the rest of the connectors on most receivers like the power input connector the switched output connector the serial programming port and finally the trigger ports now the power input is fairly self-explanatory connect a power cable to it and just plug it into the wall you're ready to go the switched power output connector lets you connect low power devices to your receiver and turn them on or off when you turn your receiver on or off now normally you don't even have to worry about the serial programming port and the trigger ports can automatically turn compatible devices on or off so with all of the connectors out of the way let's talk about getting the right receiver the biggest thing to look out for here is to make sure you're buying a receiver that's compatible with what you want to play for instance if you want to have dolby atmos in your theater the receiver is the part that needs to support atmos along with your input device like your 4k blu-ray player make sure you also get a receiver with enough continuous output power to run all of your speakers every speaker is designed differently some speakers like klipsch are very efficient speakers and will happily play loud without very much power while others like vanderstein's in my theater need a lot of power in order to sound really good now finally we have to have a talk about the price how much should you spend on a receiver it's really hard to give any sort of concrete answer here and everyone's scenario is wildly different but as a general rule of thumb about 30 percent of your budget should go to your receiver so if you have a budget of say five thousand dollars for your entire system ideally you'd wanna spend around fifteen hundred on your receiver which should give you a great upgradeable system if you wanna experiment with new gear down the road but again that's just a recommendation you can spend as much money as you want on a receiver as long as it fits what you personally need it to do and that's about it for this video i hope you found some useful information here let me know what you thought or if you have any questions and i hope you have an awesome day thanks for watching you

Channel: TwoGuyzTech

Views: 175,456

Keywords: home theater basics, home theater, home theatre, home cinema, how to setup receiver, av receiver, av processor, integra, harman/kardon, dolby, dolby atmos, dts:x, auro3d, klipsch, SVS, cables, hdmi, home theater setup, home theater tutorial, home theater how-to, how to build a home theater, home theater setup guide, banana plugs, speaker wire, how to connect speakers to receiver, how to connect receiver to tv, how to hook up a receiver, how to hook up a processor, home cinema setup

Id: 1rGcgJZ7JSQ

Length: 7min 13sec (433 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2020