Home Theater Hacks

Hack #58. Use Your Receiver for Video Switching

Run all your theater's non-component video sources through your receiver, and switch devices through the receiver.

One of the most frustrating situations in home theater is hooking up all your components and getting no picture from a particular device. It's a big shock to install a new home theater receiver and hear great sound, but see no video. Video cables are running to the receiver, one cable connects that receiver to your TV, yet you can see no picture.

The problem here is that most receivers will not switch video signals from one type of cable to another. For example, a VCR that is connected to your receiver with RCA cables will not display a picture on a TV connected to that receiver with S-Video. The receiver is incapable of converting an RCA signal (from the VCR) to S-Video (which runs to the TV). It's only in the very high-dollar ranges that this is a feature of receivers and processors.

To avoid this problem, use S-Video cables to connect all devices to your receiver. Your DVD player(s), cable and satellite receivers, and even your gaming systems should all have S-Video outputs. Some older VCRs don't have S-Video outputs, but you can buy an inexpensive composite-to-S-Video adapter from RadioShack (part #15-1242) to provide an S-Video output. The quality isn't great, but you aren't going to get good quality from a composite video signal in the first place. This solution ensures that all video coming into your receiver is ...