If you are a home theatre enthusiast, chances are you have a drawer full of extra cables, adapters, and attachments waiting to be used during a rainy day. From HDMI cables to speaker wiring, audio cables and adapters, the sky's the limit for the kind of accessories and attachments one can house. But what if you are not a professional or a home theatre enthusiast? What if you are someone that's just built a home theatre? Or are you planning on building one or are looking for a list of essential backup cables and adapters? Well, worry not as this is the list of some of the most essential cables and adapters that you should have from those available on Amazon.
Almost all modern devices connect using an HDMI cable and trust us when we tell you that you can't have enough of them around the house. From simply connecting your set-top box to connecting a gaming console and even a home theatre everything uses HDMI. Even your sound system connects to your TV via HDMI ARC. Having a good long cable lying in your drawer is a must and for that we recommend this cable. It is compatible with Blu-ray players, Apple TV, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, computers and other HDMI-enabled devices. It also meets the HDMI 2.0 which is what most devices today run on. The length of the cable is 6 feet which should be enough, although there are longer options available as well.
If you have a TV that doesn’t have ARC to connect to your home theatre system, then it will definitely have an Optical port. A lot of home theatre systems, TVs and even projectors support this format. Unlike HDMI, Optical cable is for audio-only. You can also connect your gaming console or Blu-ray player to your TV or projector via HDMI and connect the audio source of the same device to your home theatre via an Optical cable. Sure, it isn't as convenient as HDMI ARC, but it does have some conveniences and compatibility with older devices that do not support ARC.
Let's say you have a device that only supports HDMI like a set-top-box or a Blu-ray player or an Amazon Fire TV stick and you need to connect this device to a receiver or a TV that only has the traditional red, white and yellow AV input. That's where this handy little converter comes into play. Not only will it convert HDMI to AV, but it also has a little toggle for PAL and NTSC to change the format based on your device. It requires external power, so remember that.
This handy little converter lets you split your HDMI source into a separate audio and video source. So if you have a Fire TV stick and want to connect it to an old TV and want the audio from your brand new soundbar or home theatre, then this is a device for you. Plug your source device like a Fire TV stick into this device and at the other end you can connect it via HDMI to the TV and you have the option of optical, coaxial or even 3.5mm for audio. This will enhance your options for connectivity based on the setup you have giving you more options.