Audio Video Tuners for Space
Friday, February 12th, 2010Sound, without it we’d all be watching Charlie Chaplin rip-offs nearly 100 years later. Good quality sound augments the picture and increases the enjoyment of the home movie experience. Not the home movies you took on vacation, NOTHING will help with those- but the movies that you watch at home.
The best way to approach getting the most out of your movie and television watching experience is to look at your tuner. You don’t have one? Don’t worry; I’m going to help you make an informed choice. For those of you who do, I’m going to help you get the most out of what you have.
Before we even begin to look at a tuner it is important that you think about what it is you are hooking up to your TV. Most cable boxes, DVD players, satellite receivers etc can be ran through a tuner. And this is a lovely thing. Still, grab a piece of paper and see about making a list of what kinds of outputs each of these devices have. Keep the list Poindexter; we’re going to need it.
Now that you have established what sort of outputs your audio/video devices have, it’s time to take stock. HDMI is much preferred these days for ease of installation, overall neatness and preservation of audio and video quality. If your cable box does not have a HDMI output, call the cable company and tell them to bring you one, the same goes for satellite companies too. The newer DVD and Blu-Ray players should have these already. If one or two devices are component only, that’s okay as well, we’ll make it work.
Multiple HDMI outputs from your devices to the single input tuner is not a problem. A simple HDMI hub can be installed to combine all of these cables into one that will go into your tuner. Many of these have an automatic switch on them that will change to the last device powered on. So basically your tuner and TV can stay on the same settings. This is mighty convenient.
Even if some of your devices have an RCA or component output you can still use the HDMI out on your tuner. This is nice because you will have the same sound quality no matter what you are using and still do not have to change the input setting on your TV.
Buy a Blu-ray or DVD/tuner combo is a real headache saver. And in the long run cheaper too. Think about this, you can still keep all the movies you’ve purchased and upgrade your video quality for the next round of movies you’re bound to buy. This saves you money. Having a unit that does two things at once saves you time.
Following these tips will keep you from leaving one of your devices unhooked or saving you a trip to the store for something else. Overall though you will most likely find that most tuners will have enough inputs for all of your devices. It just is a nice thing to make sure.
Zeeman Haus enjoys writing articles online on a variety of subjects. You can check out his latest website on HDMI Review which discusses how you can get low prices on HDMI Cables, Splitters, Extenders, Boxes, and Adaptors.