Setting up a DVD player can be quite complex and many people are not using their DVD players to full advantage, hopefully we can give you a few pointers in the right direction.

Firstly if you are using your DVD player on only a TV or with only a Pro-Logic amplifier this should be reasonably straight forward just plug in the 3 RCA cables to a spare video /DVD in socket, the yellow one will be the video and the red and white are the stereo audio cables (red being the right channel).

If you have a Dolby Digital or a DTS amp it gets more complex as an additional cable can be used to get the full 5.1 sound experience. If your not sure what type of amp you have their will generally be a logo on the front of either DTS or Dolly Digital, Don’t confuse Dolby Pro-Logic with Dolby Digital, a Pro-Logic amp wont be able to take a digital input. If you are still unsure what all this means jump over to our Surround Sound guide for a deeper explanation.

Many DVD players will have an optical out plug its a small black square hole that may have a dust cap sitting in it. when playing a DVD this will light up red and this is how the sound is going to travel to your amp, Through a special fiber optic cable that has no wire in it but a clear length of plastic that transmits the modulated light to the back of the amp.

Now that we have this optical cable plugged in we have to maker sure the amp and DVD are setup to use it, every model amp and DVD player are different so this will be hard to describe for all models, so its best to have your manuals on hand when doing this. Your DVD player may have to be setup to turn on the digital output and as well as that you may have to select the format the audio is in, the best way if you are unsure what format is to experiment until it works. If you leave your amp on digital and auto, as soon as you select the right format the amp will most likely display Dolby Digital or DTS on the display and you will hear sound.

Not all DVDs are recorded in DTS while almost all will be recorded in Dolby Digital. A DTS film will have a Dolby Digital soundtrack as well and in most cases you will have to select DTS when playing the film or it will use the default Dolby Digital soundtrack.

Some low end DVD players may not be able to support DTS at all and and some will only have a coax digital out instead of the optical digital output. The coax output can be treated like an optical output in the fact that it can support Dolby Digital and DTS, but your amp may have limited options for connecting a coax connector. Many 5.1 amps will only have one input for a digital coax and you may not be able to connect the video signal through the amp on the same input as the coax connector is on the amp may be for CD input only. never confuse the coax connector with the left and right stereo connectors, although they have the same type of plugs (RCA) they will not work together, as the stereo connectors are analogue and the coax is digital.

One last note to remember is that you may not be able to watch a DVD via a video recorder as most discs have a copy protection format (called macrovision) on the disc to stop us making a copy of the disc, this can cause problems when watching a movie via your VCR.