Question Denon AVR doesn't respond to remote control + HELP Newbie

[eedo30]

HI. Lately I've been trying to roll back the home theater system in our basement to 2023. The projector was replaced with a qn900b and I did some cleaning up of old hardware in the avr cabinet. I have a Denon AVR 1705 (with some 5.1 Bose from the same years) which I connected via optical.
I need help with a few things:

1. Any kind of advice for a newbie like me to optimize my setup on a budget.
2. I would like to control the volume of the Denon with the remote but it doesn't work, I also tried to connect it to the tv remote with the universal remote function. Unfortunately, both the denon remote (rc 977) and the qn900 remote can turn it off or on but not change the volume.
3. As you can imagine my audio system is not thrilling but at least it does its job, to improve a little I thought of using the TV speakers at the same time using the simultaneous optical output function, it does indeed work straight away but there is a major delay between the two. In the TV settings I can adjust the delay between audio and video of the optical manually but I think it only works when I choose the optical as the only output.
4. On the software side I basically didn't do anything outside of the tv settings. How should I configure the avr?

Thanks so much for any help.

 

[TimSteve]

Hey, Hope you are doing great. It sounds very exciting that you are making efforts for renewing your home theater. If you're experiencing a delay between the TV speakers and the Denon AVR, it's likely due to the inherent processing delay in your TV. Unfortunately, using the simultaneous optical output function may not completely eliminate this delay. You could try adjusting the delay in the TV settings to minimize it, but it might only work when optical is the sole output. Explore the settings menu of your Denon AVR 1705 and familiarize yourself with the available options. Adjust audio settings such as speaker size, crossover frequency, and audio modes based on your preferences and the capabilities of your speakers.

 

[eedo30]

using the simultaneous optical output function may not completely eliminate this delay.

Actually, this function simply gives the possibility to use them together but as far as I know it doesn't modify the delay in any way.

You could try adjusting the delay in the TV settings to minimize it, but it might only work when optical is the sole output.

I believe this is exactly what is happening.

Explore the settings menu of your Denon AVR 1705 and familiarize yourself with the available options. Adjust audio settings such as speaker size, crossover frequency, and audio modes based on your preferences and the capabilities of your speakers.

This is a very old avr and the menu isn't the best to use, plus I'm not too familiar with home theaters so I don't want to make it worse and not know how to get it back to normal.
Maybe you have some suggestions about it?