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Home Theatre

V

Vidda

Senior member
My parents were looking for some home theatre equipment (CD Player and surround sound) and asked me to find something for them. Since, I have no idea, I wanted to turn to the AT guys. Does anyone have a good recommendation of some equipment under $1000 total? Or, does anyone know a good forum/review site where I could look? Thanks.
 
Originally posted by: InlineFour
(CD Player and surround sound)
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why would you need a HT for a CD player? do you mean DVD player?

$1000 won't get you very far.
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Not true, it's a good starting point. Enough for an entry level receiver (Onkyo 503) and a nice set of LR mains. For a top notch HT though I'd give yourself at least a $3000 budget, but you gotta start somewhere.
 
Originally posted by: apac
Originally posted by: InlineFour
(CD Player and surround sound)
Click to expand...

why would you need a HT for a CD player? do you mean DVD player?

$1000 won't get you very far.
Click to expand...

Not true, it's a good starting point. Enough for an entry level receiver (Onkyo 503) and a nice set of LR mains. For a top notch HT though I'd give yourself at least a $3000 budget, but you gotta start somewhere.
Click to expand...

Yeah. In fact, for just surround sound and a dvd player, a lot of people would think $1000 is overkill to spend. I'm not saying that getting better isn't worth it for some, but the majority of people have no reference, and so spending $10,000 on HT stuff is almost lost on them, as they would've been more than happy getting some $500 HTiB.

An Onkyo HTiB wouldn't be a bad choice, and you could spend the extra money on getting a decent DVD player and replacing the front left/right speakers (since music seems to be a priority for you on this, I would recommend doing this as the speakers in the Onkyo sets are tuned for movies and aren't terribly great with music). You might would even have enough to grab a replacement sub (Dayton 10 or 12 inchers). You might not even need to get a DVD player depending on what set you get.

There are plenty of combinations of speakers that would be pretty decent in your price range.

You could also grab a really nice reciever and front/left right, and then build from there in the future. This would probably be one of the better ways if music is top priority.

At any extent, I would start with the reciever. Find one that suits your needs and then figure things out from there. Then I would probably say the front/left right, followed by either a center channel (very important for voices in movies, but not really important for music) or a subwoofer (equally important for music and movies, unless the front speakers can put out adequate enough bass for whatever music you listen to). And then the surrounds (which if your pushing your budget you can scrap them altogether since in most movies and music they won't add much at all), which you can go cheap with and replace later on if necessary (Outpost sells a pair of Polk R15s for $40-50 fairly often).
 
Onkyo Home Theater In a Box (HTIB) setups are a good choice for a medium level budget like this.

Polk also makes nice 5.1 speaker sets (see Crutchfield.com) but then you need to add a receiver (Onkyo 50x/60x are good) and DVD player (almost any).
 
Yeah...cnet has never turned out good for me. I think I'll take a look at the oNkyo, that seems to be what I'm looking for. You're right...music is a priority, but my parents aren't audiophiles by any stretch, so I think they'd be happy w/ whatever they get as long as it's not utter crap.
 
Wow, C-net... /me chuckles.

So, what's the primary use of this thing? Dvds and TV? If so, and your parents aren't audiophiles, I would just go to walmart and get the RCA HTiB for $150 and a cheap DVD player with s-video and digital audio output. Cost you probably less then $300.

If your parents are a little more critial listeners, you might want to check out a low-end reciever (150-200) and piece together a set of entryy-level speakers (example: Infinity Primus C25 center, Prims 250 tower fronts, and Primus 150 bookshelfs for rears, probably about $500 ) and a decent DVD player with component out (100-150?). If you can spring an extra $450, an SVS PB10 sub will fill out the bottom range nicely.

 
This is my recommendation.

It will leave you with enough $ to get some speaker stands, decent speaker wire & AV cables.
 
Hijacking the thread a bit... I'm looking for a receiver that has HDMI output and good video upconversion. The few that I saw on Amazon were over $1000. Is there anything cheaper? Perhaps in the $500-$700 range?
 
My suggestion is not to buy bookshelf speakers and a sub. You will be missing a lot of midrange in your setup. For near the same money and some frugal shopping, I was able to purchase some Polk floor speakers and matching center, with 2 RCA rears (bookshelfs here) and a JBL sub. No they are not all matched, but they will beat the hell out of any bookshelf system I have heard. BTW I have an Onkyo receiver and they rock for the money 🙂

edit: if you do get an out of the box system, throw away their center channel and buy a dedicated one with at least 5.25" speakers. The center channel is the most important speaker in a HT setup and the cheap boxed ones are basically worthless, imo.
 
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