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[r1]

santa has bought me one of these for Christmas but it comes without the cables and there are 2 choices
1 a spdif lead
2 a scart with a red and white audio connection

are there any diffrences or dosnt it matter
and is best to connect it to the tv, or via my virgin box?
cheers

[Entwood]

My personal preference is the optical connection and connect from the TV output....   my reason is quite simple ... you then get the sound of what you are watching !! 

If you connect to a source box ... virgin/freesat/whatever.. you get the sound from that source .... so what happens if you play a DVD , or a memory stick ?? or you use the TV direct on freeview ??  you don't get the sound through the soundbar unless you faff about with leads....

So soundbar to the TV, TV speakers turned to zero volume ..

[AndyRoid]

S/PDIF is what you want.

If your TV has an optical audio output then connect the TV to the soundbar using that method.
If your TV does not have an optical out, then use the optical output from your VM box to connect to the soundbar

I would also connect the analogue audio output from the TV to the soundbar (the red & white sockets) so that if you have a 3rd party input (eg, games console), you can use the soundbar for that as well.

[Taxi_Driver]

My personal preference is the optical connection and connect from the TV output....   my reason is quite simple ... you then get the sound of what you are watching !! 

If you connect to a source box ... virgin/freesat/whatever.. you get the sound from that source .... so what happens if you play a DVD , or a memory stick ?? or you use the TV direct on freeview ??  you don't get the sound through the soundbar unless you faff about with leads....

So soundbar to the TV, TV speakers turned to zero volume ..

Optical leads from every source to the amp....is the answer 

My old (probably nearly 15 years) Sony 5.1 amp has 4 optical inputs....but must admit im maxed out on them.....tv/dvd/humax/wd tv live......tho if i needed another optical input, i would loose the tv input, as i never use the tuner in the tv, always use the humax 

My reason for this.....wd tv live, playing back movies from iso format, i always get 'dolby digital' surround sound.....and quite a bit from the humax i get the same.....from the tv i never get 'dolby digital', i guess it doesnt pass on all the info to the amp... 

[AndyRoid]

Optical leads from every source to the amp....is the answer 

That is the ideal answer, but I doubt the soundbar has more than one digital input.

from the tv i never get 'dolby digital', i guess it doesnt pass on all the info to the amp... 

Very few TV's do the digital passthrough correctly, most only offer a 2 channel stereo downmix.

[Kevin Wood]

The advantage of a digital output from the TV is that a decent TV will delay the audio to account for the delays in whatever processing its' doing on the video side, so the sound stays in sync without having to mess with adjusting delays.

My TV SPDIF out goes into the Hi-FI via a decent DAC and outputs the correct audio whatever the nature of input selected on the TV. TV can be set up to pass through surround sound or downmix it to stereo (which is what I do).