Help please. Connect 9.1 Home cinema system with PC and PS4?

Hello guys,

I want to get this LG 9.1 surround system for gaming and movies with 7.1 or 9.1 sound if possible.

lg-bh9540tw

Its on offer here for about 450 dollars.

I never owned a home cinema system before and I don't know if I can connect my PC and PS4 to the home cinema and have all the channels enabled, or at least 5.1.

I understand that HDMI will carry 7.1 sound to the receiver, what about the 9.1 audio format? From what I saw from the review of the sound system, it seems it has 2 HDMI in ports and one HDMI out port.

If I plug my PC HDMI from my video card (970 GTX) and my PS4 HDMI to the home cinema input ports and then connect the output port to my TV HDMI with ARC sound, TV is Panasonic 50GT60 Plasma , will I have the 9.1 or 5.1 surround sound enabled for my gaming systems?

Sorry if I don't explain clearly, English is not my native language.

@costyssj4:

Why do you want to use the 2nd HDMI port?

Connect the PC to the 1st HDMI port as you said, but connect the PS4 to the optical IN for 9.1 (if the game/movie supports it), then connect the HDMI from PS4 as well to the TV for video.

@GTR12: I though I could swap from HDMI 1 and 2 of the reciever to choose the PC or PS4, thats why I thought connecting both would be a good move. So 9.1 is not supported through HDMI? Only from the optical in? does that mean my PC will not have 9.1 only if i connect the optical in to the motherboard?

Thanks.

PC wont have 9.1, yes your correct, but you wouldn't really benefit if you connect it through the motherboard.

Unless it is a high-end motherboard or your planning to purchase a sound card, you wont really benefit from the 2 extra speakers.

@GTR12: this is my motherboard Asrock z77 extreme4

From what I see, it supports 7.1, and it seems that this lg hometheater system just applies some processing on a 5.1 signal making it 9.1.

So you say I can't really just use my hdmi cables from my devices to get a surround sound (atleast 5.1) on both the pc and ps4 withought being a hasle, since my tv only has one optical audio. I just wanted to connect the hdmi cables and have sound on which ever input I choose from the LG reciever.

I don't think a 9.1 signal is actually a thing. AFAIK there's Dolby Pro Logic IIz, which is just a way of expanding a 5.1 or 7.1 signal into 9 speakers.

Don't buy an all in one home cinema system, and sure as hell don't buy from a company like LG that know nothing about building speakers.

9.1 is 7.1 but with front height speakers. I assume this works with Dolby Atmos, but I really wouldn't bother since there are like 3 films that support it.

I dont get the difficult part of your problem,

PC connects to reciever by HDMI

PS4 connects to receiver by optical.

PS4 also connects to TV by HDMI but only the video is sent.

Why would you use optical when HDMI is superior for audio? Optical can't even do lossless 5.1.

I read about optical vs hdmi and it seems hdmi is better.

What I needed to know if I can just use HDMI connections to the reciever and have surround sound on both devices. I want to swap video and audio from the receiver it can take 2 inputs and output whichever. The reciever goes in to the TV ARC HDMI. What I dont want is to have different video/sound feeds.

Sometimes I have both the pc and ps4 turned on and I swap them to look at some videos or other stuff. Having the ps4 sound while having the pc video feed would be a problem.

I never had surround sound before, I just wanted to know if 5.1 atleast would work on both the pc and ps4 via HDMI. Is this possible?

Thanks

I don't know exactly how that system works but I'm going to assume it's similar to the average AV receiver. Usually it works as a switch, so you will have to have the sound and video together, i.e. you probably won't be able to have video from the PS4 and audio from the PC at the same time.

HDMI will give you 7.1 from PC and PS4, assuming your PC supports it (which any modern GPU or onboard should).

If its anything like other cheap all-in-ones, the receiver wont distinguish between HDMI input 1/2 if both devices are on. The TC will need to disable sound on the GPU everytime both devices are switched on.

Maybe thats not the case anymore, but if it doesn't "switch" by itself, thats another solution.

I just took a plunge and ordered it. From the reviews it seems great, all the reviews I've seen the score was 9+.

And I think its a good deal, on Amazon now its 1100 dollars, I'm getting it for 450 dollars.

Amazon LG-9540

It seems this model is their highest end version.

Most AVRs, soundbars etc have mutiple inputs and you select them from the remote

If you were actually going to have this done in your home, the guys you hire will have all that information. If its the geek squad, or some other source your hiring. I imagine if they know what they are doing any how.

The 9.1 is kinda a gimmick as this only really has 5.1 audio input the 9.1 will come from processing on the receiver it comes with where all the speakers connect to.and you connect your ps4 and pc to.So you should just need to connect your pc and ps4 to the reciever with hdmi set to 5.1 sound and the receiver will handle the rest. It appears to have high and low speaker for both the front and the back.

My Onkyo receiver gave me a similar option where I could use the 7.1 input if I wanted to add a high front speakers to my 5.1 setup instead of adding an additional surround set of speakers I only needed 5.1 input for this is would convert the Front Sound Channel into front high and low through audio processing on the receiver it self could do something similar for fake 7.1 converted from 5.,1 as well as 5.1 from 2.1 sources. It works sound comes out of them and is convincing enough but it wasn't originally there the wonders of modern sound processing!

I installed the home cinema, the sound was instantly recognized by both the pc and ps4. Everything sounds great, and also the 9.1 processing.

But the issue I am having now is that I have limited RGB because of the output of the receiver.

Is there a way to have it Full RGB again? I tried all the settings but nothing works. The receiver only has RGB , no limited or full setting.

Can I connect the receiver to the HDMI Arc Port, and the PC and PS4 to the different TV HDMI ports instead of the receiver input ports? Will that pass the sound of the current HDMI shown on the tv via the ARC port?

If I can't solve this issue I guess ill have no choice but to return it.

bump because of the spam above

@costyssj4: In the end I had to return the home cinema system, the sound was great but I had to sacrifice video quality on my TV, it seems this issue is with most HT Systems. I will be thinking twice before I will make another purchase again. With optical cable the sound was not that great, and 7.1 support was gone, as well as DTS HD and TrueHD audio formats. It seems optical cable is inferior to HDMI.

This thread can be closed.

Thank you guys.