Home Cinema blues

Ever tried to set up a Home Cinema system?  As experiences go, it rivals few for sublimely melding exasperation and elation in roughly equal measure.

We have a Yamaha RX-V2600 AV receiver which acts as the hub for our system, handling the expected audio duties with aplomb and also serving double duty as a video switching and processing centre.

In theory, this should make for plug-and-play simplicity.  The end result is occasionally somewhat different.  And it's all down to "Doctor Who".

You see, your bloggers are inevitably fans of the Davies-era series and have been enjoying the odd mini-marathon of DVD box set episodes on our projection screen.  The visual scale is obviously much bigger when watching in this fashion and the sound is great.

We decided - after seeing this season's penultimate episode on Saturday night - to see out the series on the big screen without waiting for the DVD.

This would involve finding a suitable video source.  Lacking the inclination to line Rupert Murdoch's pockets by ordering Sky HD, and not yet being sold on grabbing a FreeSat set-top box, we looked into the possibility of utilising the Sky Minidish on the side of our house with an old Sky box to do the job.

After some judicious searching - thank you AV Forums - we hit on using a cruddy composite cable to connect up to our Yamaha receiver.

The results?  Not pretty, but perfectly watchable.  What some would call a grainy picture, and certainly not HD in any sense, but certainly okay.

Inevitably, though, I was after more.

Cue a lunchtime jaunt to electronic hobbyist store Maplins - picture a clientele who really, really know their networking cables and despise you for not caring about that - and a purchase of a Scart to Component cable thingy to try and improve the picture.

The only problem with that?

A connection which doesn't appear to work unless you hook up with the composite cable that we're supposed to be getting rid of.

I'm going to hit my Yamaha manual for more clues - hopefully Boo will be along to fill the void with crafty goodness...