From what I have been told I could use a HDMI switch for my problem but how? I have an AV Receiver (Yamaha 661) with 2 HDMI inputs. I have 3-4 HDMI devices to connect ( Ps3 , HD DVD, Direct TV HD receiver and upconverion DVD. How?

I wanted to know if it is possible to use a HDMI switch to connect the devices to and then into the receiver and out to the TV. if so do you have to also connect some form of audio line to the receiver form each device also. If not would you have to connect each device separately to the swirtch, send the switch to the TV and then have the TV go out to the Receiver. In this case, I would also guess some form of audio out to the receiver is required but would it be from the TV to the receiver or from each individual device to the receiver. :eek:


Thanks :eek:

HDMI will carry multichannel audio. Most devices do this, so no additional audio cabling is required. In your case, you could use a 3-in-1 out switch into one of your receivers inputs and the other input for the 4th device.

Does your receiver convert component video to HDMI? If so, you don't really need an HDMI switch. Just use component video and SPDIF audio for two devices. Your satellite box and DVD player do not need the bandwith of HDMI for lossy audio anyways. This is what I am doing while I wait for a future RCVR with 4-in-2-out HDMI 1.3 at a reasonable price. You will lose 720/1080 upconversion from your DVD player using component but your receiver or TV may do this just as well and your HD DVD player probably is a better DVD upconverter anyway. The only reason I keep my DVD player is for DVD audio listening.

Please see this response- yes you can put a low cost switch box in front of the AVR:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10849490&&#post10849490

Audio is handled automatically. The playback device will automatically send the highest quality audio format supported by the AV receiver (such as 5.1 Dolby Digital). Then the AVR will decide to either send video only to the TV on the HDMI cable, or it will send video + 2 channel audio. This behavior depends on the AVR design, and many allow the user to select which of these 2 modes to use. This happens because AVR will typically have the ability to process the video & audio, which includes the ability to extract the high quality audio format off HDMI, send it to the speakers, and then either remove the audio or downsample it to 2 channel stereo before sending the audio/video stream to the TV on its output.