So the plan was to work half a day and go see the latest Batman movie then get dinner with the wife to celebrate my birthday. In the end I got dinner but no movie. You see I had purchased as a ‘self gift’ in the form of an Onkyo TX-NR414 receiver and getting the thing to work took MORE than the half a day I took off work.

Tearing down the old Sony took a while, because there are a TON of wires connected to it. Though no HDMI cables, the Sony is so old it predates HDMI being a standard feature. (Now you’re getting the idea of why I’m replacing it even though it still works. OLD!)

Anyway, I made sure to use some tape to label each speaker wire so I could re-attach them correctly, and tore the whole thing out. Putting everything back was a bit of a bother because my wireless headset for the xBox requires composite cables instead of HDMI, and I didn’t even bother re-connecting the Wii, because I haven’t used it in over a year. In the end, I simply have the cable box connected by HDMI to the receiver, the xBox by composite and my CD player hooked up with those 2 wire connectors, can’t remember their name.

I attached a USB wireless connector(TP-Link TL-WN722N) to the front of the box and remarkably, setting up the wireless network connection was pain free. It’s worked superbly, with absolutely no complaints.  I was even able to update the firmware using that USB connection. The firmware update took around 20-30 minutes as there were 2 updates required, but no real problems. I should have known my luck couldn’t be this good.

The problems happened AFTER everything was connected. I tried to confirm the physical connections (all 3 of them). The CD works fine, though I now have no remote that can talk to it. The Comcast cable works fine, but the xBox has sound but no picture. I’ve tried everything to get the composite in input from the xBox, to output through the HDMI out connection to the TV, but no dice. I had to use another set of composite cables(So glad I had a couple extra around!) to connect to the TV. So I solve that by having the Comcast 3 in one remote flip the TV input from HDMI to Composite. Inelegant but works. Not too bad a hurdle, but now, the biggie. The 3-in-one simply would NOT control the new receiver. I spent the rest of the day getting that damn thing to work. You have no idea how lucky I feel to have finally come across the AVS forum where a guy named “3FingeredGlove” had the solution to my problem. So it took all day, some sweat and rug-burned knees but I now have a new receiver connected to my sound system, and after a half a decade my center channel speaker finally works!

Happy Birthday me! (me: Screw you nerd! I wanted to see the movie!)