When I play a DVD in the system I can only get the surround sound out of the speakers but no voices. If I play a CD or hook it up to my tv everything is ok.I have tried a number of DVD's and all have the same problem.

For surround sound, you need an A/V receiver with 5.1 or 7.1 surround capability. Depending on what kind of receiver you have, the DVD player, satellite/cable box, etc hooks to the receiver, those signals go out to the TV, and the speakers hook to the receiver. The receiver decodes the signal from the cable/satellite box or DVD player and routes it to the appropriate speakers. If the TV program or DVD isn't HD or coded for surround sound, the best you can expect is 2.1 channel stereo sound. OR, you can hook everything (DVD, satellite/cable box) to the TV and run an optical cable from the Digital Output of the TV to the receiver, which is basically the same thing, just a different way to hook everything up. Hope this helps

If your DVD disc supports it, you will have to enable surround sound from the DVD, as well as the speakers.

You have to hook up the audio cables to the TV from the DVD stand alone player. Red and White is audio and Yellow is Video. The player will play movies and the sound should go to your TV speakers. If not you will need to set it on the TV in the audio source to play from your speakers on the TV. John

You can set up your tv in this way. Hook up your dvd player directly to your tv and then hook up your surround sound reciever from the audio out jacks from the back of your tv. This should allow you to use either your tv volume or the surround sound feature. Hope this helps

panasonic sa th-440 f61

You are listening to a Dolby Digital source and you either don't have a center speaker hooked up or, it's not enabled. If you only have 2 speakers connected to a surround receiver, switch your receiver from surround to surround off. If this doesn't work, or you need more help, specify your system and how it's all hooked up.

for your dvd player you just go from audio out on the back of the dvd played to the audio in on the surround sound. and you would do the same for the tv if it has an audio out. your surround sound shoud have more than 1 audio in. and then when you swicht from tv to dvd you might have change the channle, setting, source, or what ever it might be called on the surround sound. and if your tv does not have a audio out contact me at [email protected] and i try to help you. hope that works :)

Sounds like it's just in 2 channel stereo mode, only 2 speakers working out of 5 and a sub, look for a selector switch for switching to 5.1 surround, as far as the no video problem try replacing the cable for the video connection. 

It looks like all you'll need to do is hook up audio out from DirecTV to audio in on the surround sound system. Sony has an interesting hookup recommendation guide on the product support site:

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-home.pl?mdl=DAVC700&LOC=3

That should give you the connection options. The short answer, though, is to connect the best audio out from DirecTV to an audio in on the surround sound and then choose that option in the surround sound system when you want to watch TV.

do you have 5.1 speakers with built in amp?