Yet another budget home cinema thread

J

john-boro

Guest
ATM my tv and hifi set up consists of:

Harman Kardon HK620 stereo amp
Panasonic widescreen pro logic TV
Sky digibox
PS2 (carp for DVDs hence this thread)

The TV has outputs for rear, front and centre. The rear channel feeds directly to the included panasonic surrounds that came with TV. The front goes to the HK amp which feeds two castle durham 900s (bi wired). The centre goes straight to the integrated centre speaker.

Now I am looking at getting a DVD player, and setting up for real surround sound, rather than "pretend" pro logic. As you can see I have all the speakers necessary for 5.1 minus the subwoofer, which I will get at a later date. I looked at the DVD/AMP/SPEAKER packages around the £250 mark, but have decided to go for seperates.
Thing is I only have about £150-£200 to spend straight away. So i thought:
Get a DVD player -- Tosh SD220e and philips dvd 723 both seem to be highly recommended. I would then simply use RGB scart to put this into the TV, hopefully giving me pro logic surround sound??

Then at a later date, get an A/V amp, from somewhere like Richer Sounds (the £150 sherwood one looks good, save £150!). I would then wire up the existing speakers to this amp, and route all A/V equipment through it to the telly.

Do you think that the current combo of speakers and TV would suit 5.1 surround, or sould I splash out on an all-in-one
Any help appreciated
John
 
I think the best thing to do would be get a dvd player first, the toshiba is very good for the money. You really need to get the front three speakers matching for a good sound, ideally all five.

A cheap av reciever would definatly help the sound, as you would get proper dolby digital sound from dvd's. I've got a sherwood av reciever for sale if your interested? Hope that helps a bit.
 
Originally posted by john-boro
Do you think that the current combo of speakers and TV would suit 5.1 surround, or should I splash out on an all-in-one

I think that if you bought an AV receiver it would show up the deficiencies of using your TV speaker as a centre.

I would suggest firstly buying a centre speaker to match your main stereo pair and then an AV amp. The fact that the surrounds aren't up to the quality of the fronts will be less of a problem and you can continue to use your PS2 for the moment.

Problem is the matching centre speaker is about £280 on it's own although you could probably get a Keep for £200
 

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