How to connect a home theater to a computer

Before you fig­ure out how to con­nect a home the­ater (DC) to a com­put­er (PC), you should decide — why do this? And then with the help of sim­ple manip­u­la­tions, you can turn a loaf of bread into a trol­ley bus, but there will still be lit­tle point in this.

There are three rea­sons why you might want to con­nect a home the­ater to your com­put­er:

1. Using the mon­i­tor as a TV — if the lat­ter is bro­ken, but you want to watch a movie;

2. Using a DC as an audio sys­tem with a built-in ampli­fi­er — if the reg­u­lar com­put­er speak­ers are not impres­sive and you want some­thing more spec­tac­u­lar (or at least loud);

3. LAN con­nec­tion — to watch movies down­loaded to your PC on a big screen with sur­round sound.

But using the DC as a DVD dri­ve or even a DVD rip­per will not work. And if you want to watch the down­loaded movie on a big screen with sur­round sound, you will need to sep­a­rate­ly con­nect the TV to the PC and DC as an ampli­fi­er.

How to connect a home theater to a computer monitor

This instruc­tion is use­ful for those who have a bro­ken TV, but want to watch a movie with sur­round sound.

You will need:

1. Mon­i­tor and DC with HDMI con­nec­tors;

2. HDMI cable.

3. The instruc­tion may not work if:

4. The mon­i­tor or DC is not equipped with HDMI.

Pro­ce­dure:

1. Insert the HDMI cable plugs into the cor­re­spond­ing con­nec­tors on the mon­i­tor and DC;

2. Turn on both devices.

If sud­den­ly the mon­i­tor does not have HDMI, but has VGA, then you will need anoth­er cable — “tulips” ‑VGA. It is quite rare for sale. In addi­tion, such a con­nec­tion is jus­ti­fied only in one case — both the TV and the PC are bro­ken, it’s very bor­ing, you have to review the DVD col­lec­tion on a strange com­bi­na­tion of a VGA mon­i­tor and a home the­ater.

How to connect a computer to a home theater system to transmit and amplify sound

In most cas­es, DCs are equipped with an excel­lent audio sys­tem with mul­ti­ple speak­ers and a built-in ampli­fi­er. And why not take advan­tage of it? For exam­ple, sur­round sound in games will improve immer­sion in vir­tu­al worlds.

True, in this case it will be rather “pseu­do-vol­u­met­ric”, since a two-chan­nel audio stream will still be sent to the DC.

You will need:

1. Cable with “two tulip” con­nec­tors — “3.5 mm mini­jack” (RCA — Jack 3.5).

2. The instruc­tion may not work if:

3. The DC does not sup­port exter­nal sound sources.

Con­nec­tion:

1. Find on the DC two input (Input) con­nec­tors under the “tulips”;

2. Insert plugs “tulips”. It is advis­able to observe col­or polar­i­ty (red — to red, yel­low — to yel­low);

3. Plug the mini­jack into the head­phone jack on the PC;

4. Turn on the DC and set up the exter­nal device by set­ting the appro­pri­ate sound scheme. Or use auto­mat­ic set­tings.

You may also need to select speak­ers on your PC if you have mul­ti­ple sound devices con­nect­ed to it and the sound card does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch between them. To do this, click on the “Vol­ume” icon in the tray (near the clock) and set “Head­phones” as the active play­back device.

You will have to “con­jure” with the set­tings on the end device. Depend­ing on the mod­el, you will either have to care­ful­ly set the vir­tu­al­iza­tion para­me­ters, or agree with the pro­posed auto­mat­ic pre­sets. And in bud­get mod­els, it’s com­plete­ly sim­ple to choose a sig­nal source — RCA In.

How to connect a home theater to a computer via a local network

The most prac­ti­cal ver­sion of the “bun­dle”. For exam­ple, you can down­load a movie to your com­put­er — and imme­di­ate­ly play it on your home the­ater, with a large screen and mul­ti-chan­nel sur­round sound. How­ev­er, this con­nec­tion method requires both com­pat­i­ble hard­ware and some knowl­edge.

You will need:

1. Local net­work (bet­ter wire­less, Wi-Fi);

2. Com­pat­i­ble DC;

3. Soft­ware for cre­at­ing a media serv­er.

The instruc­tion may not work if:

1. The DC does not sup­port Wi-Fi or video stream recep­tion.

Con­nec­tion:

1. Con­nect the DC to Wi-Fi;

2. Make sure the DC and PC are on the same local net­work. If you have one router at home, then this require­ment is met;

3. Install a media serv­er on your PC. It can be some­thing like KODI, or spe­cial soft­ware that is rec­om­mend­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er of the DC.

Fur­ther actions depend on the spe­cif­ic DC mod­el and its sup­port for cer­tain tech­nolo­gies. So, if the DC is com­pat­i­ble with DLNA tech­nol­o­gy, then in the media serv­er pro­gram it will be enough to select the DC as a “receiv­er”.

If the DC is not com­pat­i­ble with it, but the man­u­fac­tur­er rec­om­mends one or anoth­er soft­ware, then in the DC set­tings you need to select the item “Source” (Source) — “Local Area Net­work”. Depend­ing on the mod­el, this item may be called dif­fer­ent­ly.

It is strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed that you read the instruc­tions for the DC before this con­nec­tion. The fact is that dif­fer­ent DC mod­els have dif­fer­ent inter­faces and sup­port dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies. There­fore, it is not pos­si­ble to write a uni­ver­sal instruc­tion.