Trying to connect ps3 to my receiver

[Lyrical323]

Ok, so I bought a pioneer vsx-919ah-k reciever. I'm having trouble connecting my surround sound to work with my tv and my ps3. I tried connecting my ps3 hdmi to my reciever in and my tv hdmi to my reciever out. But I got nothing. I'm trying to get surround sound for my ps3 (gaming and movies) and get surround for when I decide to just watch tv. Can some one help me with this? I'm probobly going to have to buy a optical for my ps3 and coax for my tv? Please help thanx.

[MrBoylan]

Ok, so I bought a pioneer vsx-919ah-k reciever. I'm having trouble connecting my surround sound to work with my tv and my ps3. I tried connecting my ps3 hdmi to my reciever in and my tv hdmi to my reciever out. But I got nothing. I'm trying to get surround sound for my ps3 (gaming and movies) and get surround for when I decide to just watch tv. Can some one help me with this? I'm probobly going to have to buy a optical for my ps3 and coax for my tv? Please help thanx.

From the way you have described it, it sounds like the physical connections are correct so it's probably a PS3 settings issue. Your best bet is to connect all sources (cable or satellite set-top box, Blu-ray player) to your receiver via HDMI inputs, and then connect the HDMI output of the receiver to the TV's HDMI input. This way you only have to select your source in one place (the receiver) and the TV input will never need to change.

It only gets a little trickier if you are using the TV's built-in tuner (instead of an external satellite or cable STB). If this is the case, then yes, you will need to connect the TV's fiberoptic output to one of your receiver's fiberoptic inputs, but this is not necessary if you have a cable or satellite box corrected to your receiver via HDMI.

Check the PS3's menu to make sure you have HDMI audio enabled. Also, keep in mind that your receiver will never light up the Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio lights when getting an audio signal from the PS3. The PS3 cannot "bitstream" out these audio formats. Instead the PS3 decodes these to multi-channel PCM output which is then sent over HDMI and converted to analog by the receiver. This is not necessarily a problem, just a different way of doing the decoding.

For details on where you enable the HDMI audio output on the PS3, see this page on the PlayStation web site:

PS3™ | Audio Output Settings

Hope that helps and let us know if you still have a problem.

-CB