I decided I want to get a 5.1 setup for my bedroom, though I don't NEED it I'd like to get the full effect of movies once in awhile. Plus eventually I'll need one for my living room when I move out on my own again. We've been looking at every place we can think of, Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart, Target, Cambridge Soundworks, Tweeter, and just can't come up with any system that is reasonably priced (300 dollars or under, only need a basic setup but with certain connectivity), reasonably powerful, and actually available.
Best Buy seems to be the best for local purchases right now, most of their home theatre in a box systems are on sale and would probably be more than enough for my needs (Tweeter is just ridiculously expensive, and CSW isn't very good on prices for what you get anymore; Circuit City's got like 4 systems). They have a KLH HA7000 for only 129, but they're only 20W per channel and a 50W subwoofer. For a bit more, I think 149 on sale, the HA9000 is 35W per channel and 70W sub. These are both systems with a DVD player integrated with the "receiver", with limited connections for other devices, and only Dolby Digital decoding, no DTS or Pro Logic.
Either of those would probably be plenty for me, just in my bedroom, and at those prices it wouldn't be too terrible if I had to buy another set later for a living room and just continue using these in a bedroom. But the external device connections are a problem for a friend who's also planning to buy a system. He'd like to be able to connect his Playstation2 as well as an XBox when he gets one, and the lower priced systems don't have much for inputs. Even systems over 300 dollars often don't have any S-video inputs OR outputs, because the price has all gone into getting high wattage from it.
There are a few other not terribly expensive setups as well, but they're all lacking in connection options, so even though they're good systems they aren't as useful as we'd like.
I'm looking at various things at Best Buy, and the RCA RT2500 looks like an awesome system for only 249, the lack of an integrated DVD player isn't a problem given the capabilities of the receiver and speakers, but they don't actually have the thing, and nobody online seems to yet.
I also was looking at just buying a receiver and separate speaker package, Best Buy has a Kenwood with all the connections and capabilities I could want for 139, but then trying to find a speaker set to go with it is a pain. Every place I look has only a low wattage, cheap set, and then jumps up to expensive sets that aren't even necessarily high wattage. I wouldn't want to spend more than like 150 on the speakers to go with the receiver, but I'd want to get them near 80W or even higher including a 50W or higher sub, since I can get so much just by getting an entire package for a lower price.
Also, Best Buy lists the Philips MX990D package for only 199, but we asked someone at our local store and she checked ALL the stores and none of them actually stock it. (And Best Buy's online store is being redesigned so they can't be ordered.) It looks like that model is discontinued, but even so, that price is absolutely amazing. The few listings we can find for it are still over 300 dollars even for a refurbished system. We'd really like to find a place that has that set, even if it's a bit more than 200 dollars, as it is an awesome setup even if it was a higher price, but we don't want to spend the 500 dollars that it lists for new if there are places selling it for 200 dollars.
They did have in stock an MX995D, which is the same kit but with a 5 disc DVD changer, however there's zero information online for that model, even Philips doesn't acknowledge it. It's an open box but it looks okay, and would be perhaps $280 with the open box discount. Not terrible, but we'd rather save the 80 dollars and have a single disc player.
One thing that is really pissing me off, every time I search for these things online, 90% of the results on Google are for sites that just link to Amazon, and I presume they all get a kickback for any sales from that linking. But it makes searching for anything of this nature absolutely impossible to find real information, all I can ever find are uninformative "store" sites just linking to the same Amazon pages.
So after all that unnecessary explanation, what I want to know is if there are any places besides the ones I've tried that might have decent all in one setups for a reasonable price, that we can go to locally and see them (in Massachusetts), or any places online that aren't referrals to Amazon that would have a wider range. We tried to look for some but narrowing down searches for something so broad is difficult, and we were really focusing on trying to find someone with the Philips systems. etronics.com seemed to have quite a selection but it was the only decent one we found.
Best Buy seems to be the best for local purchases right now, most of their home theatre in a box systems are on sale and would probably be more than enough for my needs (Tweeter is just ridiculously expensive, and CSW isn't very good on prices for what you get anymore; Circuit City's got like 4 systems). They have a KLH HA7000 for only 129, but they're only 20W per channel and a 50W subwoofer. For a bit more, I think 149 on sale, the HA9000 is 35W per channel and 70W sub. These are both systems with a DVD player integrated with the "receiver", with limited connections for other devices, and only Dolby Digital decoding, no DTS or Pro Logic.
Either of those would probably be plenty for me, just in my bedroom, and at those prices it wouldn't be too terrible if I had to buy another set later for a living room and just continue using these in a bedroom. But the external device connections are a problem for a friend who's also planning to buy a system. He'd like to be able to connect his Playstation2 as well as an XBox when he gets one, and the lower priced systems don't have much for inputs. Even systems over 300 dollars often don't have any S-video inputs OR outputs, because the price has all gone into getting high wattage from it.
There are a few other not terribly expensive setups as well, but they're all lacking in connection options, so even though they're good systems they aren't as useful as we'd like.
I'm looking at various things at Best Buy, and the RCA RT2500 looks like an awesome system for only 249, the lack of an integrated DVD player isn't a problem given the capabilities of the receiver and speakers, but they don't actually have the thing, and nobody online seems to yet.
I also was looking at just buying a receiver and separate speaker package, Best Buy has a Kenwood with all the connections and capabilities I could want for 139, but then trying to find a speaker set to go with it is a pain. Every place I look has only a low wattage, cheap set, and then jumps up to expensive sets that aren't even necessarily high wattage. I wouldn't want to spend more than like 150 on the speakers to go with the receiver, but I'd want to get them near 80W or even higher including a 50W or higher sub, since I can get so much just by getting an entire package for a lower price.
Also, Best Buy lists the Philips MX990D package for only 199, but we asked someone at our local store and she checked ALL the stores and none of them actually stock it. (And Best Buy's online store is being redesigned so they can't be ordered.) It looks like that model is discontinued, but even so, that price is absolutely amazing. The few listings we can find for it are still over 300 dollars even for a refurbished system. We'd really like to find a place that has that set, even if it's a bit more than 200 dollars, as it is an awesome setup even if it was a higher price, but we don't want to spend the 500 dollars that it lists for new if there are places selling it for 200 dollars.
They did have in stock an MX995D, which is the same kit but with a 5 disc DVD changer, however there's zero information online for that model, even Philips doesn't acknowledge it. It's an open box but it looks okay, and would be perhaps $280 with the open box discount. Not terrible, but we'd rather save the 80 dollars and have a single disc player.
One thing that is really pissing me off, every time I search for these things online, 90% of the results on Google are for sites that just link to Amazon, and I presume they all get a kickback for any sales from that linking. But it makes searching for anything of this nature absolutely impossible to find real information, all I can ever find are uninformative "store" sites just linking to the same Amazon pages.
So after all that unnecessary explanation, what I want to know is if there are any places besides the ones I've tried that might have decent all in one setups for a reasonable price, that we can go to locally and see them (in Massachusetts), or any places online that aren't referrals to Amazon that would have a wider range. We tried to look for some but narrowing down searches for something so broad is difficult, and we were really focusing on trying to find someone with the Philips systems. etronics.com seemed to have quite a selection but it was the only decent one we found.
I did search the forums to see if there was anything pointing to places to get speaker systems, nothing specifically answered my questions, but I saw the Fluance seemed to be considered good. The AV-HTB looks ike it'd be better for me given the price, only slightly lower power on the floor speakers it seems, but it's still more than I was looking for and also doesn't include a subwoofer.
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