I saw the 55" LED in Costco. I would love to replace my 50" Plasma "space heater" with one of those. I hope you will give us a product review after you have had time to work up an evaluation.
My Visio has performed kinda well, only requiring a reboot (pull the power cord and plug it back in to force a restart) a few times, but running it in 4:3 mode (black bars on the sides of the picture) has produced some burn in (image actually gets etched into the screen, why they came up with screeensavers for crt monitors). And the space heater remark is true for both plasma and LCD. They make heat. The LCD being a bit better about it. My Visio runs at 550 watts. That's a bunch of em. Not so bad in the winter but it runs the a/c in the summer.
The main difference between the LCD and the LED tvs is the what they use for a back light. A true LED display is what you see on the big billboards like they have at large casinos and such. The LEDS actually form the image. On the tv they couldn't make the LEDS small enough to give good resolution. They use an LCD display back lighted by an LED light source. If the back light on your LCD display burned out it would continue to generate the display, you just couldn't see it well without shining light through it from behind. By using LEDS as the source you save power and therefore generate less heat as well.
Anyway, about digital inputs for 5.1 (or 7.1). Please excuse me if you already know this, but:
You're trying to get multiple channels of sound from one device into another. The two ways to go about that are:
1) Connect each channel using its own analog two wire cable (two conductors in a single cable, POS and NEG) with the appropriate end connectors. Usually RCA connectors. For 6 channels (LF, RF, LR, RR, Center, Sub Woofer) you would use 6 separate cables. In really high end audio systems I believe this is still desirable.
Note: In computers it has been common to combine two of these channels into a single cable using one common conductor and two individual conductors for a total three.
2) Use a single digital cable that transmits a a signal which has all of the individual channel info encoded in it. The signal is decoded at the receiving end, amplified and sent to the appropriate speaker. There are two popular ways of doing this. One is a fiber optic connection, like you have referred to. The other is a coaxial cable with RCA connectors at either end. The digital signal can pass through either cabling solution.
What is needed for either solution is; that the sending device has both the means to encode the digital signal and the output connector; and that the receiving device has the means to decode the digital signal and the matching input connector.
Many devices offer both coax and optical digital connectivity. Some offer one, the other, or none at all.
If what you have been using is more like a computer surround system ( a sub woofer that has the power amps for all of the speakers built into it and is connected to a controller (possibly one of the speakers doing dual purpose) of sorts by some type of multi pinned cord) are you sure it doesn't have a coaxial SPDIF input? Its usually an orange RCA jack. But that won't help if the tv doesn't have coax SPDIF out, also usually orange.
If not you will probably be looking at a new surround receiver and speaker system. Costco has some decent ones if you don't require medium to high end stuff.
Hope this helps.
PS: Logitech does make a surround system that takes digital inputs but if you are going to have to upgrade I would spend my money on something a little better. I run a Yamaha HTR-5890 (about $500 online somewhere, I forget) but I like a decent amount of power to drive my DCM 10" main speakers in two channel mode for music listening. I'm happy with the Yamaha and they do make lower powered receivers for less money.
My Visio has performed kinda well, only requiring a reboot (pull the power cord and plug it back in to force a restart) a few times, but running it in 4:3 mode (black bars on the sides of the picture) has produced some burn in (image actually gets etched into the screen, why they came up with screeensavers for crt monitors). And the space heater remark is true for both plasma and LCD. They make heat. The LCD being a bit better about it. My Visio runs at 550 watts. That's a bunch of em. Not so bad in the winter but it runs the a/c in the summer.
The main difference between the LCD and the LED tvs is the what they use for a back light. A true LED display is what you see on the big billboards like they have at large casinos and such. The LEDS actually form the image. On the tv they couldn't make the LEDS small enough to give good resolution. They use an LCD display back lighted by an LED light source. If the back light on your LCD display burned out it would continue to generate the display, you just couldn't see it well without shining light through it from behind. By using LEDS as the source you save power and therefore generate less heat as well.
Anyway, about digital inputs for 5.1 (or 7.1). Please excuse me if you already know this, but:
You're trying to get multiple channels of sound from one device into another. The two ways to go about that are:
1) Connect each channel using its own analog two wire cable (two conductors in a single cable, POS and NEG) with the appropriate end connectors. Usually RCA connectors. For 6 channels (LF, RF, LR, RR, Center, Sub Woofer) you would use 6 separate cables. In really high end audio systems I believe this is still desirable.
Note: In computers it has been common to combine two of these channels into a single cable using one common conductor and two individual conductors for a total three.
2) Use a single digital cable that transmits a a signal which has all of the individual channel info encoded in it. The signal is decoded at the receiving end, amplified and sent to the appropriate speaker. There are two popular ways of doing this. One is a fiber optic connection, like you have referred to. The other is a coaxial cable with RCA connectors at either end. The digital signal can pass through either cabling solution.
What is needed for either solution is; that the sending device has both the means to encode the digital signal and the output connector; and that the receiving device has the means to decode the digital signal and the matching input connector.
Many devices offer both coax and optical digital connectivity. Some offer one, the other, or none at all.
If what you have been using is more like a computer surround system ( a sub woofer that has the power amps for all of the speakers built into it and is connected to a controller (possibly one of the speakers doing dual purpose) of sorts by some type of multi pinned cord) are you sure it doesn't have a coaxial SPDIF input? Its usually an orange RCA jack. But that won't help if the tv doesn't have coax SPDIF out, also usually orange.
If not you will probably be looking at a new surround receiver and speaker system. Costco has some decent ones if you don't require medium to high end stuff.
Hope this helps.
PS: Logitech does make a surround system that takes digital inputs but if you are going to have to upgrade I would spend my money on something a little better. I run a Yamaha HTR-5890 (about $500 online somewhere, I forget) but I like a decent amount of power to drive my DCM 10" main speakers in two channel mode for music listening. I'm happy with the Yamaha and they do make lower powered receivers for less money.
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