How do you setup a sound bar?

Got a vizio sound bar, tried it on a 5 year old 42 inch tv, didn't work at all with a 360, wdtv media player...had the optical hooked up to the 360 and the wdtv media player to the soundbar, nothing...had it hooked up via optical tot he tv itself and soundbar, nothing...no option for turning on the optical input either on the tv menu

tried downstairs tv with optical to soundbar and ps3 connected together, it worked. tried hooking up optical to the tv and the soundbar via optical, no option either for turning on optical on tv menu?

why does a tv even have an optical input? I'm confused here...

only way i could get it to work was the ps3 and soundbar hooked into each other with the optical.

update...now everything works if i try it with the optical to the soundbar itself...but the problem is it only has 1 optical jack, so i'd have to be switching stuff if i wanted to use it, it did include white and red audio cables, but i have no idea how that would work with a ps3, wdtv media player, or a xbox, considering i'm using hdmi and those things don't have built in audio ports

It's very simple- The TV optical output is supposed to work at all times, no matter what you're doing. So it's TV Optical Out to Soundbar Optical In

Quote from Rebound : It's very simple- The TV optical output is supposed to work at all times, no matter what you're doing. So it's TV Optical Out to Soundbar Optical In

I'll have to mess with it a little bit more, i got everything to work when i was plugging in the optical from the soundbar directly to the device, and i got the red/white stereo things to work with a media player that had the red/white inputs too, the soundbar has 1 optical and 2 red/white inputs