Well, I'm moved in and the home theater is setup! Here are some pics:
Home "TV" room (better?)
Couch with right satellite (YOyoYOhowsDAjello, you need a couch like this man )
It looks and sounds fantastic! Here's what I have for equipment:
Television: Panasonic Tau 27" flatscreen CRT (CT-27SL15)
DVD Player: Pioneer DV-588A-S DVD/SACD/DVD-A player
VCR: JVC
Receiver: Sherwood RD-6105 100w 5.1 DTS
Speakers: Philips/Magnavox 5-piece
I'll begin with the television. My wife and I considered plasmas, projectors, and CRTs under 30" (apartment, didn't want a huge rear-projection). Our viewing habits are DVDs, occasional VHS tapes, and some regular cable TV. The plasmas looked pretty good, but standard cable TV looked like trash on them, especially stretched. I've worked on them enough that I know regular cable looks bad even when you do 4:3 and have black bars on the sides. So we ruled that out because of the cable TV quality. We get like 8 HD channels and can't mount a dish in our apartment, so HD and digital is pretty much out. Next we looked at projectors. I have a sweet projector that I use for work that we tested out. Huge picture, but fast-moving scenes looked somewhat slow and the picture quality was pretty bad on our wall. I'd need a screen too, but that's not a big deal. The big drawback, aside from fast-moving scenes, was that projectors are like flashlights - too much light in the room = really light picture. We don't have super good light control, so the projector is out for now (though I really want a 1080p one when they come out ). Next we looked at CRTs. HD CRTs had the same problem, regular shows on widescreen looked funky and regular cable TV didn't look so hot. So we finally started looking at sub-30" CRTs. The Panasonic we got is awesome. It's a CRT, but with the flat screen. Picture quality is amazing and beat the picture quality of everything we've looked at over the past month. Plus, it fits our apartment perfectly. The front room is small enough that a 27" is the perfect size. So, that's the TV.
I wanted to play around with SaCD and DVD-A, so I got the Pioneer deck. It kind of feels like a toy, somewhat plasticy, but it does an excellent job. I play DVD movies through coaxial digital audio and SaCD/DVD-A discs through 6-channel direct. SaCD's don't impress me a lot. They sound good, but not enough better where I would buy one over a CD. DVD-Audio discs are a different story, however. They sound great! I picked up an Everclear disc and it sounds like you're in the middle of the recording studio. A note on that - the DVD-A version stinks, I think I could sing better than they did in that recording, lol. I tossed in the VCR for the occasional VHS tape and for pass-through on the cable.
The receiver is a nice Sherwood I got off Hot Deals for like $77. It's not super-powerful, but it has DTS and does a great job with the cheeseball speakers I have. The speakers are leftover from a Dolby Pro-Logic II CD player. They're fun. They look cheesy but they do the job quite well, plus the satellites mount right on the wall, which is great.
The couch, ah the couch - the centerpiece of the system! lol. So comfy. Plus I got a million pillows and blankets. Ah, so nice. I have YOyoYOhowsDAjello to thank for the other half of the couch - the bass shakers! I loaded 4, count em, 4 bass shakers into the couch. Wow it's awesome. I don't have a subwoofer since I'm on the second floor of my building and the sound travels right through, so the bass shakers are my wanna-be bass. They're way fun, I'd highly recommend them to anyone. I'll be putting up a tutorial later this month if anyone is interested on how to install a bass shaker system.
Oh, and I have a Logitech Harmony 659 universal programmable remote. I have 4 remotes I'm using right now. I just need to program it sometime.
I'm also working on an HTPC for the system. I'm using my Dell 4600. It's not very pretty, but it's dead quite and very fast. Right now I just have an ATI TV Wonder Pro (which I would not recommend to anyone), but I'm planning on getting a Hauppauge PVR-USB2 so I can switch it between my laptop and the dell for video editing. And hook that up to SageTV. But all that as time and budget allows It will also be my music server. My wife has an iPod Shuffle that we hook up to the system as well. Fun stuff!
So, that's my system. It sounds great, it looks great, and I love it. I'd like to thank YOyoYOhowsDAjello and everybody else who contributed their knowledge to my endeavor. Next system - 1080p projector with Rocket 750's! Yeah right, when I get a house maybe
Feel free to ask any questions!
Home "TV" room (better?)
Couch with right satellite (YOyoYOhowsDAjello, you need a couch like this man )
It looks and sounds fantastic! Here's what I have for equipment:
Television: Panasonic Tau 27" flatscreen CRT (CT-27SL15)
DVD Player: Pioneer DV-588A-S DVD/SACD/DVD-A player
VCR: JVC
Receiver: Sherwood RD-6105 100w 5.1 DTS
Speakers: Philips/Magnavox 5-piece
I'll begin with the television. My wife and I considered plasmas, projectors, and CRTs under 30" (apartment, didn't want a huge rear-projection). Our viewing habits are DVDs, occasional VHS tapes, and some regular cable TV. The plasmas looked pretty good, but standard cable TV looked like trash on them, especially stretched. I've worked on them enough that I know regular cable looks bad even when you do 4:3 and have black bars on the sides. So we ruled that out because of the cable TV quality. We get like 8 HD channels and can't mount a dish in our apartment, so HD and digital is pretty much out. Next we looked at projectors. I have a sweet projector that I use for work that we tested out. Huge picture, but fast-moving scenes looked somewhat slow and the picture quality was pretty bad on our wall. I'd need a screen too, but that's not a big deal. The big drawback, aside from fast-moving scenes, was that projectors are like flashlights - too much light in the room = really light picture. We don't have super good light control, so the projector is out for now (though I really want a 1080p one when they come out ). Next we looked at CRTs. HD CRTs had the same problem, regular shows on widescreen looked funky and regular cable TV didn't look so hot. So we finally started looking at sub-30" CRTs. The Panasonic we got is awesome. It's a CRT, but with the flat screen. Picture quality is amazing and beat the picture quality of everything we've looked at over the past month. Plus, it fits our apartment perfectly. The front room is small enough that a 27" is the perfect size. So, that's the TV.
I wanted to play around with SaCD and DVD-A, so I got the Pioneer deck. It kind of feels like a toy, somewhat plasticy, but it does an excellent job. I play DVD movies through coaxial digital audio and SaCD/DVD-A discs through 6-channel direct. SaCD's don't impress me a lot. They sound good, but not enough better where I would buy one over a CD. DVD-Audio discs are a different story, however. They sound great! I picked up an Everclear disc and it sounds like you're in the middle of the recording studio. A note on that - the DVD-A version stinks, I think I could sing better than they did in that recording, lol. I tossed in the VCR for the occasional VHS tape and for pass-through on the cable.
The receiver is a nice Sherwood I got off Hot Deals for like $77. It's not super-powerful, but it has DTS and does a great job with the cheeseball speakers I have. The speakers are leftover from a Dolby Pro-Logic II CD player. They're fun. They look cheesy but they do the job quite well, plus the satellites mount right on the wall, which is great.
The couch, ah the couch - the centerpiece of the system! lol. So comfy. Plus I got a million pillows and blankets. Ah, so nice. I have YOyoYOhowsDAjello to thank for the other half of the couch - the bass shakers! I loaded 4, count em, 4 bass shakers into the couch. Wow it's awesome. I don't have a subwoofer since I'm on the second floor of my building and the sound travels right through, so the bass shakers are my wanna-be bass. They're way fun, I'd highly recommend them to anyone. I'll be putting up a tutorial later this month if anyone is interested on how to install a bass shaker system.
Oh, and I have a Logitech Harmony 659 universal programmable remote. I have 4 remotes I'm using right now. I just need to program it sometime.
I'm also working on an HTPC for the system. I'm using my Dell 4600. It's not very pretty, but it's dead quite and very fast. Right now I just have an ATI TV Wonder Pro (which I would not recommend to anyone), but I'm planning on getting a Hauppauge PVR-USB2 so I can switch it between my laptop and the dell for video editing. And hook that up to SageTV. But all that as time and budget allows It will also be my music server. My wife has an iPod Shuffle that we hook up to the system as well. Fun stuff!
So, that's my system. It sounds great, it looks great, and I love it. I'd like to thank YOyoYOhowsDAjello and everybody else who contributed their knowledge to my endeavor. Next system - 1080p projector with Rocket 750's! Yeah right, when I get a house maybe
Feel free to ask any questions!