This is a dumb question for a lot of you, but I am looking to order cabling for my new home theater that is under construction, but I am trying to figure out how many types of cables I need to run to my projector from my receiver.

Obviously HDMI needs to go, but what if I plug in an SVideo input, or composite into the receiver? Will most decent receivers switch that over to HDMI out to my projector?

My last receiver was a Pioneer Elite model that was just before HDMI was being put into receivers, so I don't have any experience with this.

I was thinking that maybe an HDMI cable, a component cable set, and a VGA input should cover the basics, but maybe I only need HDMI and VGA???

Thanks.

Any of the recent receivers I have looked at will now send analog out through the hdmi connection. It wouldn't hurt to run all 3 cables, just in case. You might even consider running a display port cable as well. I would run them through a large conduit if possible for future cabling requirements.

I was going to run conduit to all of my speaker wires too then thought that it would be a waste. I mean, I am wiring for 8.2 even though I will have a 7.2 setup. I know that there is a lot of additional speaker setups that someone can do such as front wides and highs, but really I don't see things going that way for a long time. I was planning on something for the projector though.

Nick and Jason,

HDMI, by definition, is a digital connection, so it cannot "send analog out through the HDMI connection". Some AV receivers, not entry-level models, will do the conversion from analog video inputs (composite, S-video, component video) to an HDMI digital output. Others will offer an analog pass-through.

If an AV receiver offers HDMI output of any incoming video signals whatever their nature, you can assume the receiver has done an up-conversion to a digital HDMI output.

Regards,
Alan

I know Alan, I left the converting part out for simplicity, but reading it as is does make it sound misleading.