Little Advice Please!

Hello, I recently bought a home theater system for use with my HD TV and computer.. And I've ran into a little problem.. When my computer is connected directly to the tv it works just fine but when i run it from the theater system then to the tv it doesnt detect another display.. I have the theater system on the right tab and everything.. Its just not working..

I'm using HDMI cable to do everything.. If anyone knows how to force HDMI output that'd be useful.. Or just a easy work around works too.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: By the way.. It is all hooked up right.. When i plug my ps3 into the HDMI that the computer uses it comes right on and detects it.. But when i plug it up to my computer.. nothing...

 

Thank you for responding.. I know its been a little bit since i posted but that's not the issue.. I'm not a novice on the computer and everything is setup correctly.. When i plug the tv directly into the computer it works.. But when i plug it through the sound system it does not.. I have the tv and the system set on HDMI and it should work.. I unplug it directly from my ps3 so i know its working.. But when i plug it into my computer it doesnt detect anything.. My card only seems to be able to force VGA also..

Thanks in advance for any help

Heres my specs incase anyone knows of problems:

ATI HD Radeon 5770
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor
6 GB Memory
Windows 7 Ultimate Edition

 

I am reading this and taking a bit of an informed guess.
This is the situation as I understand it.
1. If you connect the PC to the TV using HDMI it works.
2, If you attach the PC to the home theater and then to the TV it works using VGA but not HDMI.

If I am correct the it would seem that while you are setting the TV input correctly so that it reads the HDMI signal coming from the home theater under normal circumstances but not if it is the PC then there must be an input setting on the home theater system that is not set correctly. As a result it is not recognizing any incoming signal so there is nothing to display on your TV which is basically acting as a monitor for the home theater system.

 

You're mostly correct.. Except my home theater doesnt have a vga input so it doesnt work with it..

I'm not sure about the theater system.. It's not one of the cheap ones but theres not a lot of options for it.. I'm using the same output for the home theater system as i use for everything else..

In this case i know everything is plugged in the right way because i can unplug the HDMI from my computer into my ps3 and it comes on just fine.. But my computer cant seem to detect the TV through the home theater.. If there was some way to force HDMI that'd probably work.. But I'm not finding anything in google

 

I am a little confused, are you trying to view the TV on the computer or the computer on the TV?

 

I'm trying to hook my computer up through my home theater system into the TV... It works when i plug it directly into the TV but not through the stereo system.. I don't really understand why its not working

 

OK got it and I think I have the answer but you may not like it.

When you hook up your computer directly into the TV the TV is recognized as a second monitor. Your PC will use generic drivers much as it would any monitor. My guess (and it still is just an informed guess) is that since the home theater system is not a monitor and apparently is not designed with software that will allow the signal to "pass through" to the TV so that it will "see" it as a monitor it just is not going to work.

Keep in mind that a TV is nothing more than a monitor with a built in tuner and some speakers. So, for example, when you are connected to a cable box you are really just using the monitor and sound capabilities of the TV and bypassing the tuner at the input point. In the old days that is why you needed to set a cable to an unused channel on your TV and why if you have coax attached to your TV along with the HDMI or other connection you can still see the cable input on the unused channel. That is also why the Cable will work even if you never attach the coax cable to the TV.

I hope that makes sense to you. (it does to me but that does not mean much )

 

I pretty much figured that from the second i turned it on and it didnt work I'm trying to find a way to force the output to HDMI even if it doesn't detect the signal which would work i think.. Or a way to stream audio just from hdmi(I like the sound quality it gives)

I do have two HDMI slots.. One on my video card and one on my mother board.. Any idea how i could streamline the one on my motherboard to audio and the one on my card to video? I've looked at my playback devices and it doesnt seem to detect the HDMI audio on the motherboard(Though it does detect the audio on my card)

I'm about to give up and just get a optical out cable cause my motherboard has one of those as well.. And so does my home theater

 

Since we have established that you are not going to get video from the PC to the TV through the home theater system the only remaining issue is the sound. Since your TV does not have HDMI output (unless it is one hell of a TV) the issue is getting the best sound possible out of your home theater system. Apparently, from what you are describing, you are using a graphics card on a motherboard which also has onboard graphics. Both the card and the onboard each have a HDMI output.

I think what you are asking is whether or not you can activate both graphics cards and run HDMI off each. One for sound the other to the TV. Frankly I don't think you can but that would better be answered by someone who is more of a hardware expert than I am.

However if you have a digital sound output and run that directly to the sound system that should do the job for you. I sincerely doubt that you will be able to tell the difference between the sound from an HDMI connection vs a digital optical output. In fact I always thought the latter was actually better on its own. You can also run the sound from your TV to the sound system but the quality will depend on what output there is from the TV.

 

Yeah you might be right about that.. It is still a few days before i get paid so i have some time for someone to figure it out before i spend the money on it..

On an off note i did hear about using something called an hdmi switch that computers can detect.. I dont really know if that'll work or not but that's why i'm asking

If anyone else knows anything about this problem let me know!

 

I have looked around a bit to see if an HDMI switch is anything more than what it's name implies. It is used to increase the number of available HDMI ports on a device. So if your TV has one HDMI input you can plug more than one item into the switch and control which the TV is reading by using the switch rather than input control on the TV itself.

The reason that you are not getting any other staff replies besides mine is most likely because I am right in my assumptions. We all read each others replies and generally do not respond unless there is a need to add something or make a correction.

On the other hand there can be nothing lost by talking to a Home Theater specialist where you bought your system. There may be some device available that will allow you to do what you want. It seems to me that it would need to "fool" windows into thinking it is connecting to a second monitor. That being said, if your home theater control box is located in the same location as the TV, I don't see what would be gained other than the need for a separate audio connection.

 

Yeah you're probably right.. I'm really about done dealing with it.. It actually wasn't a switch i was thinking of, It's something called an HDMI splitter.. I was thinking perhaps if my computer can detect the TV through the splitter i could just run one HDMI to the TV and the other to the stereo system.. Even if it still carries video to the stereo system it doesnt really make a difference as long as it plays the audio.

That being said the only question left to answer is if it'll detect the tv though the splitter

 

Just to answer this question, it is possible to link an integrated (Processor, not the Motherboard as far as I know) & dedicated graphics card together, but there are a few things to it, so the short answer is your computer can't support it.
The long answer is a software called Virtu which only works with Intels' Sandy & Ivy Bridge processors (they start with 2xxx & 3xxx) but also need motherboard support as well, or AMDs' Crossfire which can link the processor graphics (in A series processors) together with dedicated graphics, either way they are used to save power by using the integrated graphics for smaller graphical tasks and still have the dedicated graphics for more demanding tasks, so you can plug a HDMI cable into dedicated graphics and still use the integrated graphics.

As for the splitter, having read over the rest of the thread, it doesn't look like it will work either from my point of view as you would just be replacing two cables with one while still trying to get the outputs right, if setting the theatre system to default audio (I don't remember seeing it mentioned and it assumes that this works on the same basis of plugging headphones into the audio output/3.5mm socket) on your PC doesn't work then you would need to get the separate audio connection as BCB said.