>>But now the shock and realization that I may have gotten in over my head.
Welcome to the club. Setting an HT system up for the first time was over all of our heads. Don't worry, it passes. The trick is to get things working one piece at a time rather than going for DVD surround audio first where everything has to be just right or it doesn't work at all.
I like to get the speakers working first :
I'm guessing you already have them wired up, so you should be able to get sound out using the FM tuner, even if you have to use the tacky piece of wire antenna that comes in the box. Normally only the fronts will work, but if you pick a surround mode like ProLogicII or Neo6 the stereo FM signal will be matrixed out to all 5/7/whatever speakers.
Video next :
One very important point which Randy hinted at... "component cable" is a video connection, not an audio connection. If you are running S-Video that's all you need, stay away from the component connections.
It sounds as if you have the connection from receiver to TV working if you are able to get the receiver menu appearing on the TV. It is the receiver menu, right ? If so, next step is to get video from the DVD player to the receiver, using another S-Video cable. Get that working then let's start working on the audio.
Getting the audio working :
The DVD player may have both a coax and optical output port, or maybe just one of the two. Pick one (it doesn't matter, I like optical better but always seem to end up using coax), get the appropriate cable, and run a connection from the DVD player to one of the coax or optical inputs on the receiver. You have a whole lot of connectors to choose from but if you read the manual you will see that groups of them default together, eg. "the default for DVD is coax 2" which tells you that using anything other than coax 2 for DVD audio in is going to put you in a world of hurt
If you don't see anything like that and the manual doesn't help let us know and someone will probably download the manual and look. We're all interested in the 4806.
Assuming you picked the right input (the default) you won't have to configure anything. Play a DVD (video already works, right ?), then go into the DVD menu and make sure you have a 5.1 soundtrack selected. If you have a choice of DD or DTS stay with DD for now.
If you have been using the DVD player with a stereo system, the digital outs might be turned off in favour of the analog outs. If so, you need to go into the DVD player menu (using the manual you don't have any more
) and turn on the digital outs.
Anyways, this is the point where things should start to pretty much work. Let us know how you are doing...
