Thanks for the howdoo.
I googled for a lot of stuff lately, and I kept ending up in these forums over and over again, so who better to ask than the geeks that keep popping up.
You answered what I needed to know, although it's a drag, as it' shows I'm painted into a corner with this stuff I've got. No digital coax, no optical, no rows of shiny RCA outlets yearning to be connected.
It's a real cheezy Walmart Special DVD player, sub hundred bucks a few years ago. The reciever is a somewhat older (man, this stuff gets outdated too fast!) JVC RX518V receiver. My saving grace in all of this is a pair of JBL L112s that I bought brand new many years ago, and they can make anything sound decent. I refoamed the surround recently, and they sound as good as the first day I brought them home. Of course, I'm kicking myself for selling off all my good audio gear before a move 11 years ago, but...
What I had hoped to do was to run the DVD straight to the TV, then run audio cables out of the JVC TV, and loop that into the JVC receiver with the surround sound. My kingdom for a patch bay.
I've got a set of JVC surround speakers and powered sub, so that helps a bit. The JVC speakers replaced the cheesy freebies that came with the cheesy DVD player. I'm driving the JBL L112s with a Mitsubishi stereo, which actually drives the JBLs rather nicely.
So yeah, it's an random family sampler platter of pieces, and just trying to see what might be the best way to handle this stuff. I just tonight pulled the tv console stand thingie from the wall, so tomorrow everything gets yanked out, diagram what I've got in the way of input and output, and start drawing squiggly lines from one component to the other while consuming just enough beer to dull the headache I'll surely have at this point. At least I have good beer, so that's a start.
So it looks like I'll just use the cheezy DVD surround system with the JVC speakers, then pump the output from the TV out into the stereo JBL system with the powered sub and pretend it's all sorts of purty.
So yeah, I tracked with what you tossed my way, it's what I expected the answer to be, but hey, a guy can always hope to be wrong sometimes. Just don't mention that to my wife, mmkay?
Thanks for the feedback, it's greatly appreciated.
Steve