Home theater shops in SF?

October 20, 2006 10:33 PM

I'm taking a friend shopping for a home theater tomorrow in San Francisco. She has a very healthy budget, and I want to hit up some of the higher-end boutique stores that can give a good demo. Which ones should we go to?

I would like to convince her there are better things out there than Best Buy, and we'll be looking at assembling a complete home theater system from scratch, including HDTV, speakers, receiver, installation, etc.

posted by wubbie to shopping (12 comments total)

The only non-chain store I know of that might have something like this is San Francisco Stereo near the Castro on Market at either Noe or Sanchez. They have quite a good selection, I just don't know how TV oriented they are, so you might call first.
posted by rhizome at 11:37 PM on October 20, 2006

Seconding SF Stereo. They do have some nice HDTVs and other such things, and they give a good demo.

Then again, a TV is a TV, regardless of where you buy it. You can probably get a better price on that component at Best Buy... go to SF Stereo for... the stereo.
posted by autojack at 12:21 AM on October 21, 2006

I like Anderson's TV, pretty smart sales people and they will get close to internet pricing, and they will negotiate. You will have to travel though. They have one in Redwood City.
posted by ill3 at 12:41 AM on October 21, 2006

If she has the budget, and you want high-end boutique, go no further than Bang and Olufsen.
posted by allkindsoftime at 7:19 AM on October 21, 2006

good speakers

really good speakers

As for A/V, B&O is more style than substance. Stick with Lexicon, B&K, McIntosh or Onkyo for performance.
posted by wfc123 at 8:00 AM on October 21, 2006

Check out Cambridge Soundworks- perhaps not as wildly high-end as Bang & Olufsen, but definitely better than Best Buy.
posted by ambrosia at 8:02 AM on October 21, 2006

Onkyo sounds awesome for the money, one of their setups was recently rated #1 in Consumer Reports' home theatre reviews.
posted by bizwank at 1:16 PM on October 21, 2006

Best Buy probably isn't the best place to demo the components your friend is buying, but I definitely recommend purchasing them there, because of their price matching and replacement plans. The replacement plan I got on a TV there several years ago has already saved me about $600. Plus if you're buying high-end equipment, the Magnolia salespeople are really friendly and helpful.

(And no, I only wish I was getting paid to say that.)
posted by metaly at 3:05 PM on October 21, 2006

When you say "healthy budget", do you mean "loaded and wants to blow it" or "can spend a lot, but still wants good value"? Because high-end home theater is one of those things where you can spend a lot of money and then get your setup blown away by something 1/5th the cost.
posted by trevyn at 3:07 PM on October 21, 2006

Also, is she able to do this in a semi-dedicated darkened room? Because if so, a front projector is by far the best option, and those are almost never set up properly in stores.
posted by trevyn at 3:09 PM on October 21, 2006

Thanks for the tips, all. As a followup, we ended up hitting three places: Audio Vision on Van Ness, SF Stereo on Market, and Best Buy/Magnolia on Harrison.

Audio Vision gave by far the best demonstration, had the most knowledgable and friendly salesman, and seemed genuinely interested in our input and working with us.

SF Stereo experience wasn't as good. They asked me, as a consumer, if I had a "floor elevation" of the room when I walked in the door. I felt lucky to have brought a rough sketch. Their demo was terrible (at least for what we were looking at, we had to stand by the sunlit front door of the shop to review the equipment as people walked in and out of the store in front of us), and when we told them our budget was $10,000 max for a complete home theater system, they essentially said our budget was too low to even be in their store, and we were quickly on our way out the door. They do have a nice B&W speaker selection, though, so when I go back in a year for my own higher-end system, I'll probably go audition there.

Best Buy/Magnolia is what you'd expect. They pretty much top out where the boutique stores begin, with the DefTech speakers being the best quality in our range. They have higher end stuff, but I honestly wonder if a single soul has ever purchased their $1600/speaker Vienna system from a "big box" store.

The downside of both the smaller boutiques was a severely limited HDTV/screen selection, due I'm sure in part to the limitation of a physically smaller store. You essentially bought one of the two models they had, or you're forced to buy another brand elsewhere, which causes installation coordination headaches. Audio Vision carried Fujitsu and Hitachi in their demo room, and a Runco in their higher end room, but all were plasmas (projectors notwithstanding) and starting at $6,000, would have eaten too much of the budget. They seemed a little less interested in retaining our business when we asked them to remove that line item, since we would likely have to go with an "inferior" LCD to stay within our budget (funny, the guy at Magnolia said LCDs were a clearly superior technology to plasma.)

Since the boutiques are limited in space (and perhaps contractually) to the small handful of more esoteric/non-mainstream brands they've chosen to sell, there's a bit of a hard-sell against anything else. For example, because both shops stocked only the more pervasive and common 1080i displays, I was pretty much told I was crazy for inquiring about a 1080p display, much less one of the newer models that could accept a 1080p input.

While an average consumer may not have much need for 1080p, I think it's a good feature to invest in now if you'd like that extra measure of future-proofing your purchase. But from what they would have you believe, 1080p is still a near mythical (and completely unnecessary) feature that won't give you much (if any benefit) for another 10 years.
posted by wubbie at 10:11 PM on October 21, 2006

I know it is a little late, but here is my recommendation anyways.

One of the best independent SF home theater stores is Performance Audio on California by Divisadero. I used to live across from them and would stop by to talk tech poop with them frequently. They have good, honest takes on all the equipment and standards out there.

Take a look at the Paradigm speakers they have. Great quality and not nearly as expensive as some people think they are.

You can definitely get a satisfying setup from them with a $10k budget.

Ask for Barry or Al.
posted by JLobster at 4:17 PM on October 23, 2006