How I connected my HDTV, receiver, speakers, Wii, PS3, and more together

So how many cables do you need to connect a HDTV, PS3, receiver, speakers, HTPC, Wii, and a cable box together? The answer is huge amount! Here is a list of all the cables I bought:

• HDMI 1.3a (15 feet) x3
• HDMI 1.3a (6 feet) x2
• Toslink optical (6 feet) x 2
• Toslink optical (25 feet) x 1
• Component (25 feet) x1
• Component (6 feet) x2
• Coaxial (25 feet) x2
• Coaxial (6 feet) x2
• Red/white RCA analog (25 feet) x3
• Red/white RCA analog (6 feet) x2
• S-video (25 feet) x2
• S-video (6 feet) x2

My Denon 3808 receiver has a ton of inputs so I went a little overboard and connected everything together. For example, I ran a HDMI, component, composite, optical, and red/white analog audio cables from my cable box to the receiver. I only really needed the single HDMI cable, but I sometimes get HDMI sync issues due to the cable box’s new DVR software so I have component as a backup. I have a standard def composite cables connected because my receiver won’t down sample video to a second zone. The no down-sampling is also why I ran red/white cables from every component to my receiver.

By the way, I saw a Best Buy ad that had a 10 foot Monster HDMI cable for sale for only $109! If you can’t sense my sarcasm, just know that I bought all the cables listed above for under the price of 2 Monster HDMI cables. I got all my cables from Monoprice.com. They have high quality cables for great prices.