Help me design a home entertainment system!

November 5, 2010 7:32 AM

How do I choose the elements of a home entertainment system? I'm probably not a snowflake...

I've moved into a new house. The layout of the loungeroom requires a pretty big TV, and at the moment we have a tiny little 19" thing. We're not rich, by any stretch.

I went down to the local shop today and had a look at what's available. I must admit, a lot of it was pretty disappointing. Heaps of the TV's appeared to have compression artifacts pretty regularly (particularly noticeable in the gradients of the graphics of the sports show they had on)... is that normal for today's TVs? Even the spendy models seemed to be displaying it, though the type and amount seemed to vary with each TV so I don't think it was the actual broadcast?

Anyway, my favourite picture in my price range was this Samsung Series 5 plasma which appeared to have few artifacts, nice colour, and handled the motion well. Is this a good pick? I'd expect to pay about 10 percent less than the advertised price, post-haggling. (US dollars and Australian dollars are pretty much on par at the moment, though we tend to have to pay a bit more for tech than you guys do).

It also comes with a Blu-Ray player via redemption (I hate redemption schemes, but what do you do?) which looks like it will handle Samsung's internet TV, USB drives with DivX/Xvid files, and networking.

The last link in the chain is a PVR, I guess. I'm tempted to use my old PC (just upgraded to an iMac) and buy a TV tuner card for it. Is this a good option? I don't want to spend Tivo-money on the PVR, but I'd like something with "almost Tivo" ease of use. Is a computer really suitable to use this way? (Note, I'm probably not geeky enough to set this up myself, I'd get a friend to do it for me). Are any of the PC-based off-the-shelf PVR units a worthwhile thing?

Finally, I have a great set of Jamo speakers from a 15-20 year old stereo setup, but the amplifier appears to have kicked the bucket. I don't really care about surround sound (should I? I've never had it), so what, if anything, should I purchase to drive the speakers? I'd like to plug an ipod into it occasionally, or maybe run iTunes from the PC if that's the way I go.

So many questions! How would you design a home theatre setup on a budget?

Thanks Hivemind :)

Col.

posted by autocol to Technology (10 answers total)

Assuming you do not have all the wiring already, Monster cables are utter, utter ripoffs. Do not buy them.
posted by griphus at 7:35 AM on November 5, 2010

For what it's worth, the artifacts were probably in the source material, not the TV. Big box stores have a single source running to all their TVs, which generally makes the content look pretty bad. If you hook up a Blu-Ray player and put in a well-transferred film, you won't see any of that.

Samsung make great sets. I'm not sure how it is in Australia, but I've found that some of the best prices on TVs come from Amazon, which usually has free shipping.

Mac-based PVR: I've heard great things about EyeTV. Integrate it with Plex (which I use daily) and you'll be set.

Sound: What you're looking for is a home theater in a box (HTiB). Cnet usually has a rundown of what's new and good.
posted by supercres at 7:42 AM on November 5, 2010

You really can't judge a TV by how it looks at the store. Yes, that's completely ridiculous, but there you have it. Fact is, most televisions have truly awful out-of-box default settings, and I wouldn't count on the guy at Best But to bother adjusting each one to perfection.

When you say particularly noticeable in the gradients, for instance, that could simply be a result of the contrast being set too high, which is nearly always the case with the default settings.
posted by Sys Rq at 7:55 AM on November 5, 2010

Lessee

Lessons I've learned -
Display - I prefer Projectors to TV. Similiar prices (800-1000 will get you a rocking 1080p DLP, and 300 will get you a swanky 92" pulldown da-lite highpower screen).

Receivers - I love Denons, especially if you can get last years models on closeout. Make sure you get one that supports audio over hdmi. If you can, go listen to the model you're looking for since it does make a difference in how it sounds.

HTIB - I've got a double set of velodyne deco's that rule for movies. Not particularly musical, but clear as hell for film. I don't think they make it anymore though.

How to watch stuff - Currently I'm running a popcorn hour a-100 and an nas drive. I just setup a western digital live tv hub at my parents house. It's a pretty cool all in one box that bestbuy sells and handles way more formats than the apple tv. You might consider the boxee box if dlink ever releases it as well.

Roll your own - Plex is nice, but it has some issues that make it not acceptable for me. Things like getting stuck in the options menu if you use the ios remote client. XBMC is still a huge pain in the ass. Boxee is probably the best of the bunch, but the tv/movie scraping for it still sucks. As far as I can tell, the roll your own stuff still isn't quite up to snuff with the standalones.

PVR - There's a reason people call most dvr's Tivos. I still think it's the best. Scan Slickdeals/etc and see if you can find one on closeout or a deal.
posted by Lord_Pall at 8:00 AM on November 5, 2010

I'll agree with previous comments on:

* plasma over LCD -- 600hz refresh rate does look better than 60hz
we picked up a Panasonic plasma 720 last year

* Denon receivers -- get a refurb or closeout

* monster cables are ripoffs

and here's a decent article on 720 vs 1080 -- http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter

I like my hard-drive-based AppleTV quite a bit (after jailbreak), but I'm at 720p not 1080, and no blu-ray on my system.

good luck!
posted by omnidrew at 8:22 AM on November 5, 2010

See what colour controls the 5 series offers compared to the 6 series. We got a 5 series LCD and I was unhappy with the colour after getting it home. I found that you could only adjust the white balance, which didn't really help much. I was very glad to exchange it for a lower end 6 series. Again, this was 2 years ago and an lcd...but check.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:42 AM on November 5, 2010

- Broadcasters, PS3's, XBOX 360's send 720 signals. Either your receiver or monitor will upscale to 1080. So the only thing that you will see at 1080 is Bluray or computer-output.

- Cheaper receivers ($1500 and below) may not allow you to split signals from HDMI (audio from one, video from another, output across HDMI.) That means if you wanted to have music playing from the computer (i.e. Elvis' Greatest Christmas tunes) and have the Fireplace channel on for ambience from your TV provider, then you'd have to make the appropriate adjustments so that at least one of them isn't connected by HDMI. Jump online and check the manual for "HDMI Signals" or something like that if this is an important feature to you.

- Just a warning that if you end up using your own computer solution for pvr you will probably encounter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing which is related to refresh rates, frame rates, progressive scan, and graphics cards. Depending on your snobbery you might not be offended by these blatant corruptions of the graphics. Mac computers don't usually produce these effects, just a heads up.
posted by Khazk at 8:56 AM on November 5, 2010

I cannot open the page to see what you were looking at but I bought a Series 5 Samsung (the 32" LE32C580) about two months ago and it's a great piece of kit.

I have an Asus EeeBox EB1012 running Windows 7 Media Center and have been pretty happy with it. Setting it up was actually easy but if you want to start doing some of the more interesting things (eg. watching content in other video formats, browsing TV and movie content with correct meta-data, advert skipping, remote recording via a web browser) then you have to be prepared to get down and dirty. This can take a while to set up and configure and waste many hours of your time.

Although mine has been running for several months, I still have a list as long as my arm on things I want to change, fix or tweak. On the upside, the GF is happy with the solution - which says a lot.
posted by mr_silver at 9:00 AM on November 5, 2010

You should check out SageTV Media Center, which is cross platform. The forums are pretty helpful. SageTV is a DVR + music / video / photos media center / player. There are even plugins for Netflix, Pandora, Hulu, Amazon VOD, etc.

At least on Windows machines, it's not really recommended to connect them directly to a TV, as there's weird sorts of problems that can pop up. My guess is that the situation on the Mac is a lot easier in that regard.

SageTV records programs in mpeg format, so to use the recordings with an iPod / iPad / iPhone / AppleTV, you'd have to convert them with Handbrake or AirVideo.

SageTV also sells a hardware extender device, which is along the lines of an AppleTV, but it runs the SageTV interface and connects to your SageTV server. My server is hooked up to three of these extenders at the TVs in my house, so we have the same interface / access to media at each location.

SageTV can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be.

A friend of mine does the EyeTV / Plex thing and is super happy with it. If you're only ever going to have one TV / display hooked up to this system that you want to full access to, that might be the way to go. Then you can get an AppleTV to pop onto any other TVs / displays that you get in the future. Since EyeTV records things in mp4 format, you'd be good to go w/o converting.

For receivers, I like Denon and Onkyo.

Surround sound is ok. Any receiver you get now will support it and you can always buy more speakers later if you want. Go for stereo now and see what you feel like doing later. There are some places that will let you demo speakers in your own home for some length of time, and that can be great to try things out w/o dropping the cash.

In terms of resolution, in addition to the carltonbale article referenced above, I found this comparison between HD movie sources to be really interesting. AppleTV comes out pretty well.

I haven't upgraded to HD yet. When I do, I'm kind of tempted to get an AppleTV b/c of the slickness of the interface. I really like SageTV, but it's not as flexible as I'd like when it comes to listening to music. I miss things like smartplay lists.d

Any receive will support you being able to plug in an iPod. You can buy a $5 cable that will let you do that.

Will your viewing room be dedicated? Are you able to block out all or almost all of the light? If not, then a projector may not be right for you. I have a regular TV in my living room, but in my basement I have a projector. I spent roughly $1000 7 years ago and at the time, was getting a much better picture for much less money than if I had gone w/ a regular display. When I upgrade to HD, I'll be getting another projector. Another thing w/ projectors to factor in is the lifespan of bulbs is less than in TVs and the bulb costs are not trivial.
posted by reddot at 10:26 AM on November 5, 2010

You are probalby going to want to upgrade to some sort of "surround sound" becasue you will want, at the very least, a center speaker for voice. Jamo makes a number of center speakers if you want ot match the sound. In addition, it is difficult to find a relatively inexpensive reciever that does not have at least 5.1 output, stereo seems to be reserved for high-end systems. I don't know if rear speakers are in your budget, but they do make for a more immersive experience, so at least keep them in mind.
posted by rtimmel at 2:37 PM on November 5, 2010