Home "theater"

[Shann]

Maybe too grand a term. I'm looking for about a 55" HDTV and a simple stereo that can be hooked into it with wireless speakers. Just something that will make the tv sound better and play a few cds. I have regular Comcast cable. I'll also be hooking up a simple old dvd player.

My budget for everything is about $1,500. Simplicity of installation and use probably most important feature, as I am not an audiophile, just want something pretty good.

I'm thinking of going to a local tv\stereo shop that I had good luck with before, but everything is about a third more expensive through him than buying online or at a box store. The guy is a real pro, but I don't know if its worth it at my level, as opposed to some of the high end stuff I've seen him do.

 

[mwerner]

Ours is sort of cobbled-together....But should illustrate what you can do... We bought a Sharp 53" TV about 4 years ago... Same size is cheaper now.
A Yamaha stereo receiver from Amazon for (as I recall) about 150 bucks, and likewise a 5-speaker set with a powered sub-woofer. (this is wired, not bluetooth....Bluetooth speakers were just hitting the market.)
Anyway... Works well. The DVD player plugs into the receiver, and it's wired to the internet so from that we have access to Netflix, Hulu, etc, as well as CDs and any content we want to add from a flash drive.
The receiver will pick up FM stations and of course amplify anything we get from the Charter digital box if we desire.

So it all works pretty well.... The only downside is all the remotes.... You need the TV remote to change inputs, the stereo remote to adjust the sound and source, and the DVD player remote to fire the whole thing up... That in addition to the cable company's remote for cable tv.
Of course, you could buy one of those infinitely-programmable aftermarket remotes.....If you have a degree in computer engineering to program the thing.

 

[Bufford]

The sound coming from flat panel TVs tend to be thin. My set up is similar using 7 different remotes. For sound I use a two speaker cheap stereo and the sound is good. The CD stacker on the cheap stereo packed up and I was being used as a radio. Then came the 52 inch TV with lousy sound. I hooked the audio input up and its been serving well for several years now.

 

[Shann]

I went and talked to an installer today. He said that he didn't do surround sound any more unless it was high end because a sound bar provided good sound for a lot less money, especially if you used a subwoofer.

He recommended a Samsung 6350 55" as an excellent "mid range" LED HDTV. The price he quoted was pretty much what the amazon and best buy prices were.

 

[gadgetgeek]

there is a lot of good info on the wirecutter, including features to look for, and useless ones that are just price padding.

You'll do just fine with a soundbar and sub, for sound. If you game or watch sports, you'll want to make sure that the response rate of the TV is fast enough to prevent smearing. Some of the cheaper "high def" tvs gain resolution at the cost of everything else, so be wary of great deals on TVs that seem too good to be true. There are a lot of crappy models on the market, often one model number different from the good one. So just keep track of your return policies.

 

[lawp]

Find the TV you like. I spent $1200. Find a decent quality 2-channel stereo amp. I bought a used Denon, but you don't need that much quality. Find a pair of decent stereo speakers, a large bookshelf size is adequate. I had an old pair of DCM-18, but mid-price is enough. You will need a handful of wires. Probably won't be wireless to the speakers with a simple amp. Also you don't need a subwoofer if the speakers are full range. When buying components, take care that the inputs/outputs from one to another are compatible. HDMI connections generally are easiest and best fidelity.

You can wire your DVD player into the stereo amp and get picture and sound, or play just music.

 

[gadgetgeek]

At the moment, you'll get a fuller response from a bar than adding in another amp and just taking a stereo channel. The bar should be able to grab all 5 standard channels over the digital audio connection and spreads them out, and you get the sub channel which in my experience is one of the more important ones. If you are only using a 2 channel system, you won't get the really low frequencies that fill in the bottom, since they only exist on the .1 channel. The more frequencies you try to get out of a single speaker, the more noise you generate. Especially the wider between the top and bottom. So say you have an action movie with a lot of thundery bass, and a lot of "atmosphere" sound which tends to the high end. This causes a loss of clarity in the mid-range, where the voices are. Even if your amp can take in the DAC signal, and splits it, depending on what it uses to decide what goes where, you will end up with some signal loss, and some equalizing that may or may not be useful. Also, by moving your low frequency source to somewhere else, since its non-directional, you can get more bass volume without overwhelming the other sounds.

Caveat, almost everything I know about audio comes from commercial applications, conferences and concerts, but sound is sound. Lawp, I'm not saying you are wrong, your system certainly does work. But at the moment, the cheap-easy-low profile method is to get a bar. surround sound for home theater was never properly implemented, and it takes a far more work to set up that is worth-while in general. But that means that there are a lot of factors from that that make simple solutions less than ideal since the technologies don't play nice. Bars are a good middle ground that gets you 80% of the full system with no pain.

In general, a lot of people don't notice much when it comes to audio quality, but as you get older, clarity starts to really play a major factor.

One other thought, audio and video systems are changing quite rapidly right now, so there is a pretty limited economy in buying for the long term. By the time you replace the TV, the audio and video systems will have moved on, and you will be replacing the entire set anyway.