Connecting your brand new Blu-ray player to your old projection telly can be a nightmare, especially when many components still don't ship with cables in the box.
Today, LG in the US launched a website to help you untangle your rat's nest of AV cabling with a step-by-step guide to connecting your home cinema system.
Wirewize (www.wirewize.com) lets you choose individual components, then shows what cables you need to hook them up and how to do it - including illustrations of the back panels of each device.
The website is aimed at a US audience so some of the names are unfamiliar, but it does seem to have a fairly wide selection of current and older models from all the major electronics brands (not just LG). If you can't find a specific model number for your aging telly, you can always choose 'generic device'.
Obsolete options
One downside is that Wirewize seems a little of date. You can select tape decks and VHS recorders but there are no MP3 players, PMPs or media streamers listed on the site at launch - often the trickiest devices to get working with older kit.
The site then recommends a selection of cables (with links to purchase online) and gives a 1-2-3 guide of how to plug them in. The cable choice makes sense, with the site choosing HDMI over component and only resorting to analogue connections when necesary.
However, some back-panel photos are missing from the site, even for popular LCD and plasma tellies
Overall, Wirewize is a good site for anyone struggling with getting their system to work - and definitely worth trying before you spend time and money on customer support or tech call-out services.
