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.