What Does This Box Do?

I couldn't figure out which group this should go in, but since it's about cabling an hooking up I guess I'll put it here.
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I don't understand a whole lot about how the new Home Theater stuff works.

I just bought a new LCD TV and the sound is poor. I'm far from a audiophile but I'm abraded by the sound from this Samsung TV. So, I want to improve the sound, but not to a high-tone degree[pun intended]. I'm looking at this thing - tinyurl dot com/3tqquj - from Sony and have some questions. Here's the manual - tinyurl dot com/3gl5db

It accepts three HDMI inputs and gives one HDMI out. I assume this means I can hook up three HDMI out devices to it and have it switch between them using a remote control. At present I only have two such devices, a DVR and a DVD player.

Question 1: Do I only need to hook these HDMI devices to the Sony device and hook the Sony device to the TV?

Question 2: It makes claims about "controlling" the TV. What does that mean? In what way does it control the TV? Power on-off? TV Sound? Anything else? Or, does it simply send the video & audio to the TV?

Question 3: I assume it controls the sound to it's own speakers without having to get anything back from the TV. Is that correct?

Question 4: I have a VCR with component video output. I couldn't see that it accepts component video & audio -- does it?

Question 5: Does it accept composite video & left/right analog audio?

Question 6: It has a coax input connector, but no coax out. It doesn't have a tuner, so how does this work? What does it do with the signal coming in on the coax?

I'm not a great fan of "sound bars"...replacing small TV speakers with small sound bar speakers is not much of an inprovement. The system you show ONLY handles HDMI video switching (pass through). You would still have to hook the sources up by optical Toslink or digital coax cable to get surround audio and that would be fairly worthless with the psuedo surround created by sound delay and reflected sound from the bar.

Have you checked the menu on your TV for the audio settings. Move all the settings to 0 (zero) and then experiment with the sound. Some factory settings vastly over-emphasize the treble - a typical on the floor dealer display setting.

The system you show ONLY handles HDMI video switching (pass through). You would still have to hook the sources up by optical Toslink or digital coax cable to get surround audio . . .

Are you saying it does not play the full audio sent to it via HDMI by a device such as a DVD player or a DVR? Since it's main purpose is a sound system, this seems unlikely.

Yes, I am saying it will NOT handle the sound signal on the HDMI cable. It will only handle the video. You will need either a Toslink optical cable or a digital coax cable to pipe the surround sound from the source to the Sony box. Most inexpensive "surround systems" handle audio this way. As to whether the sound bar can create the sense of surround sound, it tries to accomplish this by using delay circuits and bouncing sound off walls to fake a surround sound field.

Yes, I am saying it will NOT handle the sound signal on the HDMI cable. It will only handle the video.

After your post, I called Sony and they say it does take sound from the HDMI cable and use it to drive the 3.1 channel system.

If you get one, let us know how it worked out for you.

Check out this forum. If this is the same HTIB you are looking at.

http://www./avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1026566

I tried it in a Sears and it didn't seem very good.

Check out this forum. If this is the same HTIB you are looking at.

===I'm not allowed to post links===

I tried it in a Sears and it didn't seem very good.

Thanks, but the link doesn't work for me.

This is a dummy post, so after this I can post links

I stand corrected ! After re-reading the specifications, it does state the unit accepts audio and video via HDMI. I missed that little bit of info the first time through. For an HDMI source, you only need a single HDMI cable from each source to the CT100 and one from the CT100 to the TV

As "Rbinck" mentioned, please let us know how you like the results

I got one. The sound quality is obviously better than the my Samsung TV, but it doesn't have much volume. Many channels are OK, but for those channel with low volume, even when you push it to the maximum, it doesn't put out enough sound. I'd seen this complaint in a number of user reviews, but I thought these might be the people who run the volume in their cars up so high you can listen a half-block away. Sorry to say, that isn't the case.

I really liked this arrangement where it picked off the sound on it's way to the TV and it could switch HDMI inputs. That all worked just like I'd hoped. If only it put out a little more volume.

Now I have to decide what to do. Before I bought this TV I'd been using an old Sony stereo receiver and a pair of Technics speakers. I was happy with the sound from this setup. The problem is the receiver doesn't have a remote for volume control. My previous TVs had the the ability to send TV controlled sound out to the receiver -- this one doesn't and I can't live with getting up every time I want to change or mute the sound.