Connecting New Samsung HDTV to Home Theatre, etc

[Not Tech Friendly]

I seem to be lost in a maze of cables here.

I have a: new Samsung 8000 Smart HDTV with lots of HDMI, Optical, & various connections. I am trying to connect a DVR cable box that has one HDMI, & some digital optical ports, to an older Panasonic SA-HE100 Receiver that has only digital optical ports, etc. (no HDMI) and a similar Panasonic Progressive Scan DVD player. I also have an Apple TV box, and a 4 input/2 output HDMI matrix switch, if needed.

Can anyone tell me the simplest way to connect these?

 

[americanaudiophile]

There are 2 options. The first is to connect everthing to the TV with HDMI. The TV has an optical audio output that you can connect to the receiver. You may need to select the correct audio output mode in the TV menu. Sometimes the TV does not feed all source to the audio out so the other alternative is to add optical outs where needed directly to the receiver. Don't remember if the Apple TV has optical out.
The switch box will not help you in this situation. There are HMDI switchers that can extract the audio from the HDMI and give you an optical audio out that you could feed to the receiver but these are usually used for TVs that don't have audio outputs.