A method for automatically defining or learning the configuration of a
television interconnected with a plurality of peripheral devices utilizes
a digital control channel to define the analog interconnections. This
method does not require the consumer to know the specific configuration
of the system. The system functions properly whether peripheral devices
are in the video chain path or not. This method enables a suser to simply
connect peripheral devices to any one of the multiple inputs of the video
processing apparatus. The video processing apparatus employs a systematic
process of (1) commanding each of said peripheral devices via a digital
bus, such as an IEEE 1394 serial bus, to transmit a signal from its
analog output, (2) monitoring the analog inputs of the video processing
apparatus to determine which of the inputs receives the transmitted
signal, and (3) constructing a map of the analog interconnectivity of
each peripheral device connected to said video processing device.