Connecting Bose Lifestyle Home Theater Speakers directly to My TV

[oskifans]

I have an old Bose Lifestyle 28 home theater system. The dvd/video receive died. So I have a subwoofer and five speakers. Since the its a powered speaker system it seems I should be able to plug into into my TV and run the speakers directly from my TV (Sony LCD flat screen). I am looking for an adapter that would convert the wire what looks like an 8 pin mini DIN into either an RCA configuration or HDMI. Any pointers on this would be greatly appreciated. Bose just wants to sell me an entirely new system.

Thanks.

 

[getochkn]

You would have to do some trial an error. The connector appears to have 9 pins on it. All 9 might not be used. I can only see 7 or 8 being used. They would share a common ground, so you would have

1. ground.
2 fr left
3 fr right
4 center
5 r left
6 r right
and
7 sub
or
7 sub
8 sub ground


This is what I would do, and it's up to you to do this route and I take no responsibilities for the results, but I'm comfortable playing around with electronics.

Cut the 9 pin cable and expose and strip the wires.

The ground would probably be shielded, or two grounds. They would either bare wire or wrapped in plastic wrapped in foil. I would then use a multimeter and figure out what pin was ground. Then I would take an mp3 player, or phone or audio source and take a 3.5mm to 3.5mm extension cable and cut it. Then I would connect the two grounds on the cut cable and start with the audio source playing and touch the wires one by one to the remaining wires of the 9pin cable and hear what speakers it comes out of and then mark them down, probably by color.

Then if you are using your PC to get surround sound, you would need a 3x3.5mm extension cables and cut them to splice to the wires.

Hard to explain. I know a pair of wire cutters and some extension cables and a multimeter I would have thing playing surround sound in 20 mins.

 

[oskifans]

Thanks. Actually its 8 pins not nine but you are correct in your assessment. Actually this helps a lot. I don't mind tinkering with this and I know folks who have the gear and some expertise so coupled with this I can at least have fun being junior detective.

 

[getochkn]

Should be doable then. From looking the main unit has the DVD and audio decoder and then sends that to the 2nd unit which is just the amp and it's all through that 8pin cable, so I don't see why not. I would even breadboard it since they all share a common ground, using a small PCB to connect 6 ground together is nicer to me than 6 wires all tied in a big knot, but either way would work. lol.

 

[americanaudiophile]

There are two issues you might have beyond just hooking them up.
First is that you would only get 2,0 channels since your don't have a surround processor and the TV analog out will be stereo. No sub out either so no sub.
Second is your TV would need an variable audio output so you could make the connection and adjust the volume.
If the output is fixed analog or digital you won't have a way of controlling the volume.

 

[getochkn]

Ah, ya. I was thinking you were going to use it for a PC and you could make it work that. Way it is, as said, you will only get 2 channels since that's all your TV will have coming out.

Now if you are really into doing electronic's fun, you could make a small box with volume control for each channel and do a very cheap stereo - > surround circuit.

This is what I would do off the top of my head and really only need a small breadboard and some caps and volume knobs if you wanted volume control. lol.

You will have a Left and Right source coming from the TV.

I would take both signals and put them together to sum them for the center channel. This would only need a couple resistors.

I would take the same summed signal and run it through a low pass filter circuit. this will give you the sub channel.

I would then take the left channel and that goes to left front, same with right, goes to right front.

Now the two rear surround speakers would be the challenge on what to do. you could build a simple delay circuit by a few ms to give it a kind of echo effect, or just a high pass filter and filter out the highs so you only get the high chhhh's and chaaaa's from the rear, or both.


Probably way above your head on what I said, but just saying you could with some resistors, capacitors, breadboard and volume knobs, you could make a sim-surround box.

 

[oskifans]

This has been great. I am not sure if I will be able to implement any of these, but it will give me something to do. I would be happy with some sound coming out of the speakers (even if it isn't surround sound) since right now I have an old satellite system (2 speakers and a sub) from a computer I bought ages ago hooked up to the TV, and the TV speakers are OK but you know how they are.

 

[oskifans]

Also, this feels like the kind of thing you would have gone to Radio Shack for. Talk to some nerdy kid (who has by now started a dozen IPO's and can buy and sell you) and he/she would have whipped something up there in the store. Ah the good old days.