Surround a wash on the Wii for me; if only I could cable my DVD.
With all the (perfectly understandable) anger over the audio separation issues in the Wii version of Guitar Hero III, I decided to finally make time today to set my surround sound system back up. You see, I had it installed before I moved a little over a year ago, and never got around to getting it back up and running in my new home, though I tried and couldn’t get it to work properly.
I spent some time tonight online trying to figure out why the hours of work today getting everything mounted back on the walls and snaking wires around my toddler’s toys into safe places behind the furniture had amounted to nothing, and it turns out as always, it all comes down to a lack of component inputs on the various devices sitting on and in my TV stand.
You see, something has to decode the audio coming out of my Wii, because it doesn’t have its own decoder like my DVD player does. I had always assumed my stereo receiver had the decoder in it, because I got some great surround while playing DVDs through it where I used to live. Unfortunately, when I moved in here we got a cable box so I could get HDTV channels, and that consumed one of the two component inputs on the back of my TV set. My Wii claimed the other when it replaced my Gamecube, and the DVD was bumped to an S-Video connection… which robbed me of the surround decoding ability.
So now I’ve got a DVD player with lousy audio and lousy video, a Wii with good video and lousy audio, and a cable box with good video (it’s HD, you know) and a terrible remote that doesn’t do anything well. Not that the remote has anything to do with any of this, but you know, I really dislike that remote.
Needless to say, my surround speakers sit silent. Maybe I can have the stereo simulate something, but what’s the point? I need a receiver that will decode the audio, and I need a TV with more inputs. Or I need to start buying game consoles that play DVDs, for crying out loud.
Tags: audio, dolby, surround sound
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I still use a DVD player alongside the PS3 because my kids like to load the DVD player themselves. The phillips player is really a good player except for its annoying remote.
My TV only has two component inputs as well. One is for the DVD the other is for the PS3 (since the TV’s DVI input is probably glitchy).
The TV does a good enough job with stereo sound that with some games frequently the background noises in the game will make me think I’m hearing something somewhere else in my house and have me pause the game. I’ve never had a receiver and surround sound system and would probably only go down the road of one of those one or two-speaker Bose surround systems just because I can’t run wires through walls there.
That said I’d want to set up a receiver so I could use headphones with my PS3 after hours.
Or, you could just get a component switch-box. They’re pretty cheap and mine has 4 separate sets of inputs. If you really want to spend the money, you can get one with a remote. I’m cheap, though, so I just hit one of the buttons and it switches to the proper console. At one time, had a 360, regular Xbox, Wii, and PS2 all hooked up to it. No reason you couldn’t put a DVD player on there, though.
I can’t imagine going without surround now. It’s an absolute necessity in my everyday gaming.
The switch boxes tend to degrade your signal if you don’t buy the high-end self-powered ones. I’ve looked at a few and they’re a bit pricey. James, I know what you mean. I really need to pick up a receiver that can decode that audio.
Shoulda grabbed one on Black Friday!
I bought my receiver last year because I had a similar issue: the DVD player I had had the Dolby Digital/DTS decoder built-in and it only produced 6 discrete audio channels. Therefore the speakers that came w/ the setup only had 6 discrete inputs and no logic, only amp’s. Once I obtained other devices that had surround capability (OTA Digital TV, PS2, a new DVD player once that one died), I needed a way to get real digital audio and bought myself a 6.1 receiver. I looked at the 7.1 systems, but since 7.1 was only supported via 8 discrete audio lines, and HDMI 1.3 wasn’t available on any receiver or source yet, I decided that I could upgrade my receiver at a later date and save a $100-200.
The one I settled with supports component switching (3-to-1) and up-convert s-video/composite to component. That way I only have a component connection from the receiver to the TV. The only issue I have with is that I wished the component inputs were closer to their corresponding 2-channel audio inputs and that I had more of them. With a PS2 and DVD player it’s almost already full and I have a PC-based DVR and NextGen consoles to add :-/. With this generation, I will definitely be replacing my standalone DVD player with either a console or the PC-DVR.