It all depends on what you know about the latest technology and what you want from your home theater system. There are many things involved in buying a smart TV and a home theater system, and one of them is connectivity.
Following that will be the size and all the other extra features, but most important is whether you will be able to connect, and there are quite a few devices you may want to connect your smart TV to for optimum entertainment.
In a home entertainment center, your display is the centerpiece to provide you with access to a world of great content. Let’s take a look at how to connect smart TV to home theater so you can enjoy your favorite content.
Home Theater
This is where you will spend a large portion of your family time together, and you want it to be the best. Depending on your preferences, and those of your household, a home theater performance is the pinnacle.
A basic home theater system will consist of the display, which is the TV or projector, or both as the visual component. Then there is the video media or component that is basically any type of device that plays DVD or Blu-ray discs.
The third component that is an integral part of your home theater system is the sound output devices. These may consist of a single output speaker or maybe one of the many types of stereo output systems.
The fourth component that is part of the home theater system is the receiver, which is the heart of the home theater. There are many technicalities involved with the receiver, but we need to know that this is the control center.
The control center is where everything comes together in your home system and is distributed to the rest of the components. From here, the sound is sent to whatever system you have, like 5.1, and display to the TV.
How to Connect the Smart TV
Your TV should then be connected to the receiver from where it will get the visual signals that will be displayed. The first thing you will need is an audio return channel cable (ARC) that you must purchase separately in most cases.
With most new smart TV’s you can use this cable to play the sound of your TV via the surround sound system. To be able to use ARC as the sound communication, both the TV and the audio device must support ARC.
You will need a high-speed HDMI cable to get this to work perfectly and connect your TV with the sound output device. For that, use the first HDMI port, which will be marked ARC to put this cable into the TV.
From there, your cable must be connected to your sound source, which will be the receiver or sound bar, depending on your setup. In the setup menu of the TV, you can disable the TV speakers, and your TV will be the sound source.
This is made very easy with the newest smart TV’s, and you can use the ARC connection for both audio and video. Not all smart TVs work the same, so you will have to consult the manual for the correct port.
Normal Setup
For a standard setup, you will connect your TV with the home theater system by using the HDMI port on both devices. These ports will be located at the back of the TV and the back of the controller of the home theater.
After you connected the two devices, locate the input button on the remote control of your TV, and sync the right port. In most cases, you will select the number 1 HDMI port to connect your TV to your home theater receiving device.
For the sound setup, you will use the basic red and white audio cables and match the colors with each other between the devices. This is basically the white to the white on the output on the TV and the input on the home theater device.
And the same will be for the red connector to the back of the TV and the back of the home theater controller device. With this connection setup, it will allow you to have stereo sound output to your speakers.
To have surround sound, you will need to get another cable and connect it between the TV and home theater device. This is called an optical Toslink cable and is used to connect between the TV and the home theater device.
This cable needs to be plugged into the optical input at the back of your home theater controller device. And you need to connect this optical cable to the optical output at the back of your TV, and you will have surround sound.
What Else You Need to Do
With a smart TV, you are not limited to what you can connect to your home theater system. There are a few things that you can do with a smart TV you can not do with a normal TV.
One of those things is you can make your smart TV the control center to connect a variety of devices to the home theater. This will include smartphones as well as gaming consoles to provide you with a world of entertainment.
Not all smart TVs are the same, and you need to plan ahead when you buy a smart TV for your home theater. Decide what you want to add to your home theater and then select the smart TV with the right connections.
Final Thoughts
It is very important when you set your home theater up to make sure you can add devices at a later stage. Your smart TV must be able to adapt to your preferences and be able to be upgraded to your liking.
Sometimes you may not have the money to start out with all the devices you want to be part of your home theater. And other times you change your mind, or you want to expand your home theater.