laboitenoire

Alright, before anyone gets their hopes up, this does not allow you to play Mortal Kombat or any game for that matter in glorious 5.1 surround sound like you can with an XBOX. However, you can watch The Hunt For Red October, Indiana Jones, or any other movie in it. As some of you people with nice home theater setups know, hooking up a DVD player to your system via optical or coaxial digital, you can watch a DVD in DD or DTS if they're supported. The PS2 does not come with this enabled, but it's relatively simple to set it up. Here's what you will need:

1. a PS2
2. an audio/video receiver that supports optical digital inputs
3. a fiber optic audio cable (available wherever home theater stuff is sold)
4. DVDs to test with

Alright, here's the setup bit:

1. Take the optical cable out of its package. The connector should look like this:

2. Plug one end of this cable into one of the optical jacks on the back of your receiver. The jack should be labeled "OPTICAL" or something to that effect. To find out where it goes exactly, read the manual that came with your receiver.
3. Plug the other end of the cable into the optical jack on your PS2. It should be on the back like this:

Note: if you have the new slimline PS2, look around. Need help finding it, RTFM.
4. Hook up all the other cables for your PS2.
5. That's what you do for the cable hookup.

Now come's the configuration for the digital hookup.

1. Turn on you receiver and set it to the input which you plugged your PS2 into. On my receiver, I have it on VIDEO 2.
2. Read your manual to figure out how to set the input to use the optical jack you used to hookup the PS2. For me, I pushed a few buttons which brought up the digital connection config menues.
3. Once the receiver is setup, turn on your PS2. Make sure there are no disks in the drive, as we need to get to the System Configuration menu.
4. In the menu, scroll down until you reach the option labeled "Optical Digital Out" and then hit X. Change the option from off to on and hit circle until you are back to the main menu of your PS2.

And finally, we setup the DD/DTS playback capabilities.

1. Insert a DVD into your PS2's drive, and wait until you get all the way to the DVD menu. Then hit SELECT and find the option labeled Setup.
2. Scroll over to the audio setup menu. Go down to where there are two options. One is for DTS and the other is for Dolby Digital. Set them both to ON.
3. Go to thee setup menu of your DVD (may also be called audio setup or options) and tell it wether you want DD or DTS.
4. Play your movie, and if everything worked right, your receiver should say Dolby Digital or DTS.

Pros to using doing this:
You can now listen to DVDs in the higher quality sound formats that support real surround sound (we're not talking about Pro Logic or SRS, which only simulate it). Also, playing games will allow you to get a high quality signal, which may increase your gaming experience (I certainly appreciate playing GT4 in Pro Logic II when it isn't an analog signal). Also, you probably know how to do things with your audio receiver that you might not have known before.

Cons:
Well, the interface for navigating the DVD isn't as smooth as with an actual DVD player, but you can always buy the remote. Also, the PS2 has a pretty noisy fan, which can be annoying to have to put up with. However, I use my PS2 to watch movies when the batteries in the remote die, so I don't have to get up to navigate the menues.

Well, there you have it folks. Enjoy.

Chipp

Very detailed and explained well, sure to help a lot of home theater noobies out there. Nice work!