Out of the HDTV swamp

My new Samsung LA40B530P7F HDTV was a great new addition to the home but as usual, when you go up a cog or two technically then the components don't all match. The hard drive recorder I had has had to go elsewhere because it didn't have an HDMI connection. Enter the  LG HR598D Blue Ray/ DVD recorder combo which hooks into the wifi and has LAN capabilities and I was in awe...until last night when I tried to play a disk I own from another region. All my other players and recorders are multizone. We get DVDs from everywhere. There is no code yet for the LG. It is so new! So then I thought I'd use the Pioneer DV-344, which even though it is old, has very good image quality and is multizone. The Samsung picked it up as a component but nothing. So I looked at what had been plugged where and then googled to my heart's content. There was no real help but there were bits and pieces of information which got me on track so I offer this to you if are having trouble trying to connect an older DVD player to an HDTV.At the back of the Pioneer is a video switch which you switch to the left for higher input video signals. You change the Pioneer settings to PCM on the sound menu in hte settings. You connect the red and white  sound cables directly into the sound system box. I chose 5 channel. Mine is not a fancy system. The  red, green and blue component leads go from the component connections on the back of the DVD player to the component connections on the back of the TV. Bingo..all works now! Can't believe it. It was a swamp there for a while...always is with new gadgetry.