I work construction so mounting a TV mount was easy lol. It just needs to be screwed into the stud is all so it can handle the weight. The receiver does have HDMI but with so many consoles plugged into switches then plugged into the TV it would have been a nightmare to wire. So I just use the optical out from the TV and have that going in the receiver. Super easy. And the reason the rears aren't hooked up is mostly for my wife. Our living room is small and the speakers are literally like 6 inches from our heads lol. My wife likes to unwind at night and having my games blaring into her head is not the best thing lol. So I unplugged them for her.
how many consoles were plugged into the switches that goes to the tv if you don't mind me asking?
yeah using the optical out from the tv to the receiver does simplify things but if you have a blu ray player or 4k blu ray player or gaming consoles that support blu-ray or later like 4k blu-ray, they support lossless high res audios like dolby true hd and dts hdma and later like dolby atmos and dts x which are also lossless surround sound audios. unfortunately optical audio connections does not support uncompressed or lossless high def audio like dolby true hd or dolby atmos for examples mostly because of copy protection and legacy optical audio connection bandwidth isn't high enough to transfer uncompressed or lossless high res surround sounds i think.
if you play a videogame or watch a movie with dolby atmos lossless, it will convert it to lossy codec in order for it to transfer to the receiver that means you won't get a pristine clean audio quality. i think that is why connecting say like a 4k blu-ray player to the receiver hdmi would be better to get that pure uncompressed sound. if your 4k blu-ray player has two hdmi connections like one for audio/video and the 2nd one for audio only, connection the 2nd one audio only to the receiver hdmi in, you will get better sound that way while the 1st hdmi connection connected to the tv's hdmi for video. but for older consoles that doesn't have uncompressed or lossless compressed multi-channel high res audio sources, using the optical out from the tv to the receiver should be fine i think.
how many hdmi inputs does your av receiver has if you don't mind me asking?
I mean it's like anything. You learn by doing and researching. I'm still learning all the time. You don't learn any skill without practice.
It's gonna be a while lol. I'm picking up my old 13 inch CRT from my parents house tomorrow to hold me over until I get either another TV or fix this one.
yeah. does your much older 13" tv have component video input or s-video? wow, its interesting you could live with playing videogames on a really small 13" tv back then.