how to connect my computer to the LCD TV and to my home theater system

[roise_r]

hello all, i am looking for some suggestions on "what is the best way to connect my computer to my home theater system and to my LCD TV, so i can watch movies in HD format directly from my computer. What i am trying to do is have my computer, which has VGA and DVI outputs, send video-signal to my LCD TV which is Samsung 37", which has HDMI inputs and VGA input, and send audio signal to my 5.1ch hometheater system. My Hometheater system, which is Samsung HT-x70, has HDMI input and HDMI output. it also has Digital Audio input. what i would like to do is: whenever i want to play a DVD on the player, i would switch my hardware player to DVD mode, ... whenever i wish to play something from my computer, i would just switch the DVD to Digital audio in, and just bypass the video signal through the HDMI input and output... can i do that? what is this digital audio and does it support 5.1 channels, can i output this kind of signal from my 5.1channel computer sound card?

P.S. a little add-on. the distance between my comp and TV-DVD setup is about 45 feet (15 meters). the distance between my TV and DVD is less then 4 feet (~1 meter). There are two ways i was thinking about:

1. by a long 45feet VGA cable and 45feet digital audio cable... (assuming it supports 5.1ch) and connect the TV end of the VGA cable directly to the VGA input on the TV, and the DigitAudio cable into the Digit input on the DVD player, and every time i want to use the computer as the source, switch TV to PC mode, and switch DVD to Digit audio mode

2. (more convenient, more expensive, probably less quality-loss) use a 45feet DVI-to-HDMI cable, or a 45 feet DVI cable and a DVI-HDMI converter, to make the signal go through the HDMI passby on the DVD player into the TV's HDMI input, and use the same digital audio cable to transmit the audio to the player. this way i won't have to switch both TV and DVD every time i choose to watch a movie either on the DVD player, or from the computer...

what would you suggest... 10x10x10x

[rumplestiltskin]

The 45 foot distance is the big problem. I'm not sure you won't have too much video signal loss with that length of cable.

Why not use a media extender of some sort (like an AppleTV) and then connect using Ethernet?