Help! Feel so stupid ...

[BigV]

Not "channel", but "input". Your tv has a display (the screen) and a sound system (the speakers). It can use these outputs (almost ALWAYS) together, from the same source, the same A/V (audio/video) source. If your dvd player has an hdmi output, the audio and the video are both being transmitted over the same cable. If your tv has an hdmi input, it will get the audio *and* video from that input. The inputs, sometimes called "source" are selectable from the remote for the tv. You might have a range like "cable", "a/v", "hdmi (1/2/3)", "line 1/2", "tv", "antenna", etc. Your tv almost certainly won't have all of these, but it's just like in the olden days when you had to tune your television to channel 3 to watch the tape from the vcr. Or maybe you tuned the tv to "line input" or "line 1". That "tuning" is the is the same as the input selection or the source selection.

You already have this figured out because you can find the video for the dvd player. But, mysteriously, you don't have the audio that you know should be coming out of the tv along with the video. This is a good puzzle.

What I'd do is to simplify the problem. Try to conquer it by dividing it. Does the tv output sound all by itself? Check. Does the dvd player output sound to a different tv? Unknown. Can you check this? Does the given cable transmit audio and video from other known good sources? That kind of troubleshooting will isolate the problem.

I know you know most of this, probably all of it, I was just thinking out loud. The novelty of the sound of my own voice is an appealing change, now that I have my finger out of my ear.