If you’re building a complete home theatre system the first thing to keep in mind is not to expect it to go together quickly. By the time you put together the speakers, connect all the wiring to your TV and then try to figure out the remote control unit, I’d be surprised if you could do a system in under a couple of hours.

Read The Manual
Many of these devices have to be linked together in a chain for them to work. For example, your TV aerial has to go to your set-top box and the video output of the set-top box to your TV. If you don’t get the connections right, that’s when things can go pear-shaped. It actually makes sense to read through the manual before you start pulling bits out of plastic bags. You need to get an idea of what you’re in for, so while it’s very tempting to starting ripping into the job, it’ll go much faster if you read the manual first.

Connections
Unfortunately, every new bit of technology these days seems to come with a new way of connecting to other bits, and it’s now at the point where there are as many as a dozen different types of connectors for you to get confused over. However if you master this, you should be able to put just about anything together. Now let’s take a look at the setup of a typical home theatre system.

Speakers
When you pick up a surround sound kit for a home theatre system, you’ll typically find each speaker individually wrapped in the box, along with a bag of wiring. On one end, you may find a two-pin plug that goes into the back of your receiver (or amplifier) unit, and on the other end, just two bare wires. You might even find both ends of each speaker lead is just bare ends.

To get the sound quality as good as it should be, it’s important you either follow the wiring diagram in the manual or, failing a decent manual, be careful about how you connect these wires. In simple terms, take care with the polarity of the speaker wiring. If the cable has just bare wire ends, you’ll typically find spring-loaded or screw thread terminals on the back of the speaker. One will be black, the other grey or red. The speaker wiring itself should be colour coded, with some marker on one wire to indicate polarity.

You must wire up each speaker in exactly the same manner. If you don’t, you’ll end up with what’s known as ‘out-of-phase’ speakers. Sitting in the middle of two out-of-phase speakers can often sound like your head’s being pulled inside out. You’ll hear sound, but you’ll be missing a lot of the lower frequencies or deeper-pitched sounds because the speakers are essentially fighting each other.

Wireless Speakers
An increasing number of home theatre surround sound speaker systems are including wireless rear speakers to help cut down on the length of wiring you have to run around your house. The way these typically work is that the main receiver unit transmits the audio for the rear speakers over radio waves, and a sound module for the rear speakers picks up those radio waves and decodes the audio from them.

Some speakers will have all of this built inside them, while others have a separate sound module that sits on the floor between them. Others again will also have two transceiver modules that have to be installed: one into the rear sound module and the other into the main amplifier or DVD/amplifier unit. This is the case for some Sony units, so don’t forget to install these otherwise you won’t hear anything coming out of the rear speakers.

TV Set
Buying a new big-screen plasma or LCD TV can be lots of fun until you get it home and realise you’ve got to wire the thing up. If you’re putting together all new gear it’s not too bad, but it’s when you have to try to integrate a new TV (or any device) with your existing gear that things can get a bit hairy.

If you’re buying a new TV and DVD or Blu-ray player, look for ones that support HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface). The beauty of this connection is that it’s just a single cable that carries both video and sound in digital format from your player to the TV. Any decent retailer will throw in an HDMI cable if you’re buying the TV and player at the same time.

Integrating Other Devices
The real trouble often comes when you try to hook up existing devices to a new setup. Typically you’re going to have older devices that use analogue connections. These are typically composite video, S-Video and component video as well as analogue audio. The simplest way to hook up your old DVD/VCR combo, for example, is to hook it to one of the TV’s inputs.

In order of decreasing quality, you want to look for component video, S-Video and composite video connections. Typically though, most VCRs and DVD/VCR combos will likely only have composite video outputs, so connect this to a composite video input on the back of the TV.

Because new TVs have a swag of input options, it makes sense to have everything plugged into the back of the TV. That way you only need one main remote to switch between them. That said, you need to note which inputs you use, so it’s easier to cycle between the various devices.

Gaming Consoles
Gaming consoles are video devices and it helps to think of them in a similar way when connecting one to your home theatre system. With the Xbox 360 and PS3, the best connection to use is HDMI, as this will give you the best picture and sound quality on your new big-screen plasma or LCD TV. If you’re using an older CRT TV, you’ll typically have to use a composite video input on the TV.

Connecting The Antenna
If you’ve bought yourself a set-top box or a DVD recorder you’ve got an extra connection to think about: the antenna. Unlike other connections, the TV antenna connection has to be connected between devices in a ‘daisy-chain’ manner. You’ll find that your DVD recorder or set-top box has two antenna connections: one going in, the other going out. Connect the antenna to the first device’s input socket, then connect the antenna output socket of that device to the antenna input socket of the next device and so on. The last link in the chain should be the antenna output of the last recording device to the antenna input of your TV.

Best DVD-To-TV Connections
If you’re confused by the myriad of ways to connect your DVD or Blu-ray player to your TV, here’s a quick list from best to worst quality. Whatever the best connection the two devices have in common, use that.

• HDMI
• DVI
• VGA
• Component Video
• S-Video
• Composite video

Some odd devices may use some other connectors, but the video connection format should fall into at least one of these six categories.