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How Do I Set Up My AVR to Play Music While Watching Baseball?

Al Griffin  |  Sep 14, 2015

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Q My Yamaha RX-A2010 A/V receiver is connected to a Samsung 4K TV, Verizon HD set-top box, and Oppo Blu-ray Disc player. Here’s my question: Is it possible for me to watch a baseball game while listening to music? Whenever I play music from a turntable or other audio source, I’m not able to see video on the screen. What am I doing wrong? —J. Rivera / via e-mail

A I get this question enough that I’m starting to think most baseball fans would prefer Pink Floyd to hearing announcers when watching games. (The sport in question always seems to be baseball.) It is possible with many receivers to output video to a TV from one source while playing audio from a different source. Not all receivers, especially older models, provide this capability, however.

Newer models from Yamaha make it easy for you to mix and match video and audio sources when configuring inputs. Once set up, you can, for example, watch HD video from a DirecTV HDR connected to an HDMI input on the receiver while listening to CDs via a player connected to a coaxial digital input. But the RX-A2010 (which came out in 2011) is an older model, and it might provide less flexibility for configuring audio sources that are different from the active video source.

Either way, the reason you’re not seeing video when you switch to the receiver’s turntable input is that there isn’t a video source assigned to it (which might not be possible with your model). One workaround would be to use your turntable as the source input for the receiver’s Main zone, and then tap its Zone 2/3 feature to route analog video from the component or composite video output of your satellite or cable box to the TV. The baseball game won’t look as high-res as what you’d get with an HDMI connection, but your LPs will sound good!

COMMENTS
John Sully's picture
Submitted by John Sully on September 14, 2015 - 10:27am

On more recent Denon receivers the way to handle this is to being listening to music and then press the "Option" key on your remote. This will bring up a pop-up menu. From that menu choose "video select" and then choose whatever video source you want to watch. Voila!

CJLA's picture
Submitted by CJLA on September 14, 2015 - 4:48pm

Hey J, You could take your HDMI cable from your Verizon STB (set top box), and send it directly to the TV, instead of routing it through the receiver. Then hook up one of the audio out cables from the Verizon STB directly to the receiver.

hbomb7's picture
Submitted by hbomb7 on September 15, 2015 - 12:52pm

I have an Onkyo AVR which is about 5 years old. What you can do is hook up all of your devices directly to the HDMI inputs on your TV. For instance, Cable Box to HDMI 1, Oppo to HDMI 2 and AVR to HDMI 3. This way you can listen to your Oppo and switch back to the game without a problem. BTW, I also have a Oppo.

Brandon Iron's picture
Submitted by Brandon Iron on September 15, 2015 - 5:33pm

I don't use my AVR all the time, especially for baseball. Besides HDMI out from cable box to AVR, I also have component video out from the cable box to TV. I just mute the TV, turn on the AVR and listen to music. This isn't going to be good if you're playing SACD's or DVD Audio because you won't see the screen display but I just press play on the remote.

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