AboutNagy George Expertise Bsc. in Electronics and Communication engineering. Satellite dish installer, trouble shooter and Quality Auditor for 12 years. Author of the Satellite news article in the "satellite Guide Magazine". Member of the satellite club international (SCI). Member of the IEEE (Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).
Member of the Australian Institution of Engineers.
Expert in signal distribution on many TV sets. Deep knowledge in related fields such as CCTV (closed circuit TV), surround sound and speakers.
Having said that, I have no experience in TV repair.
Expert: Nagy George Date: 10/13/2006 Subject: surround hookup for best quality
Question I have a hd dvr with optical,coaxil,rca, and s video for audio options then I have a panasonic edtv with s video optical and rca , then I have a rca surround which only has optical and coaxil and a dvd with coaxil and s video .. what is the best quality way to hook this up .. currently have cable box running to surround and am bypassing the tv but was told it would be better to run optical out of tv .. please give me some good options . tv and cable box have hdmi connections but I am using component cables ..is that a big loss?
Answer Dwight,
Let me rank them and leave you the choice:
For sound, normal RCAs would be very basic, optical and coaxial are two different methods to hook-up digital audio, I am not really sure if one is better than the other!!
When it comes to picture (or both Video and Audio signal for some of these), HDMI is the best and most recent, it is similar to DV (on digital handycams and similar) but handles audio as well in digital, then comes RGB or composite (red, green and blue plugs are all for picture so you usually run AV by RCA along with it) then below it is S-video which is again video only, below it is RCA AV or the lowest type of connectin would be by RF thru a normal coaxial cable which gets you to tune a channel number on the TV (it is the lowest in quality that's why it doesn't exist on DVDs).
