Sony DAV-SC8 - died need replacement

Matt306

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After 18 months of ownership my DAV-SC8 has died. No fault of the unit, a power surge killed it (along with an ADSL router and Wireless AP). If I'm honest I was never really all that impressed by it and it did have a tendancy to "crash" a fair bit. So I don't really want to replace it with the same model or even another all-in-one.

The house insurance should give me £650 (orig purchase price) to replace it, so what would be a good AV receiver and DVD player/recorder for the money. I'll be looking at utilising the speakers and sub from the SC8 until I can afford to replace them.

The single most important feature for the receiver is that it must be able to switch video sources. Anything that makes changing between Sky/DVD/PS2 difficult is going to get me killed by the wife.
 
Amps can be complicated and a programable/multi remote may save your life.

You'll have to see what specs your speakers have before pairing them with an amp, as otherwise damage could be done. This information is uauly on the back of the speakers or located somewhere on them, your looking for 4 6 or 8Ohm impedance and it's wattage would usualy be something like 100 Watts max 50 constant. Don't worry if it doesn't have all that info.

A 'real' amp will have alot of video switching options but you'll nto find one with scarts, but its easy enough to get arround as there are cables that convert between.

There are life style amps, these usualy have scarts and are pretty thin, somewhat comparable to the sony in size but should offer better quality.

http://ws2.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=YAMA-RXSL80S
http://ws2.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=PION-VSXC502-SIL

On the full size amps check these out
http://ws2.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=CAMB-AZUR540R-SIL
http://ws2.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=YAMA-DSPAX757SE-TIT
 
Nothing on the speakers themselves but the manual has them rated at 100W, but I'll take that with a pinch of salt. The 540R does look rather meaty for the price and it would give me more money for a DVD Recorder. I did have my eye on the Pio 1015 but I may just be going for style over substance.

Another daft question but will a component to scart cable will work ok with my 32" CRT (5 year old Sharp 76EF-20H)? Otherwise my plan for a "proper" amp could be scuppered
 
Not sure about component to scart, your tv may hae RGB scart which requires a converter, but if you tv has multiple inputs it can be easier to just plug one thing into the RGB scart and the amp which everything else though into the svideo enabled one.

If your TV has scart connections, i.e. Red Green Blue phono connections then just plug stuff from the amp into there.

Not quite sure what connection setup your tv has, but there wil be a way :)
 
3 Scarts - 1 RGB (TV), 1 S-Video (AV1), 1 Standard (AV2). It also has a proper s-video input but it's on the front of the set.
 
If you want to perserve RGB as its the best quality stick either DVD or Sky directly in there, also has thee benifit of not neading the amp on for sound (may be more of a benifit for sky if you watch it a lot). Then from the amp side you get a s-video->scart lead which'll plug into the s-vid scart socket.

Now everything else should be pluged into the amp via s-video, either strait cables or converter ones if there is no s-video on the source only scart.

Audio should preferably be sent via digital means, either optical or co-ax depending on the source and the connections on the amps connections. Most sources will have a analauge stereo out also which you can plug into the amp if there isn't a digital one, if not either but a scart only then you can get scart->s-vid+2xphono cables.
 
I've bitten the bullet and gone for a Denon 1906 and 1920. Now I need cables. In an ideal world I would connect the DVD up to the TV using the RGB scart and everything else can run from the S-Video Scart via the amp, but as the whole thing has to be wife friendly (changing inputs on the CRT is a pain) The DVD will have to go S-video too. As I will be replacing the CRT with a Plasma next year I'm not going to spend a fortune on S-video and S-video to Scart cables. Are the IXOS range of cables a good compromise between performance and cost? Here's a list of what I'm looking to buy:

IXOS XHV401 1.5m S-Video to Scart Lead
IXOS 1m XHV403 S-Video Lead (x3 SKY+, DVD, Laptop)
IXOS XFA07 1.5m Digital Phono Lead
Thor 1.5m Universal Fibre Optic Lead

Thanks
 
Cheap branded will see you through, will give you an advantage over cheapo scart, but most people especialy on a crt would strugle to tell the difference when something is 2 or even 10x a much. £30 a cable is probably the max you should need to pay.
 
Cheers gazbarber. Probably buy some Profigold stuff and save myself £40 overall.
 

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