Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Home theatre setup

This is topic Home theatre setup in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=000096

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 12-28-2000, 02:30 PM:

Ok, so I finally got the DVD player I wanted for Christmas. Now it's time to totally revamp my home theatre setup. I bought a new Sony receiver (STRDE945) that offers a mulititude of features and has both DTS & DD reproduction capabilities. I currently have a 'cheapo' JBL Flix10 center/surround combo, Cerwin Vega AT-15 mains (old but very good speakers). I just ordered a new JBL S series center channel from (www.simplycheap.com) as well as a sub (Sony SA-WM40).

The sub and center channel shoudl be here Monday or Tuesday and the receiver will be here the 4th of Jan. I plan on swapping out the cheapo JLB Flix surrounds for a pair of JBL Industrial Series 8216A's that were used as surrounds at a theatre we had in town that closed down. Wish I could have gotten my hands on the sub, but that *had* to go back

Do any of you folks out there have any first hand experience with any of the equipment I mentioned? I read many reviews from (www.audioreview.com) to help make my mind. I'm not looking to sink a bunch of money into this setup, becuase if I want to hear/see it the BEST way, I'll watch it at work...

The next thing I'll be replacing is the mains. I'm gonna have to research into it a little more before I drop a wad on mains tho... Klipsh? AR's? JBL's? Boston Acoustics? Any help?

Thanks all in advance..

------------------
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-29-2000, 07:37 AM:

For anyone involved in home theatre, WideScreen Review magazine is an excellent resource:
http://www.widescreenreview.com/

Also check out Perry Sun's Movie Sound Page:
http://www.moviesoundpage.com/

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 12-29-2000, 02:17 PM:

Thanks for the links John. I'll check them out over the weekend. I have also decided to upgrade my boob toob to a larger screen with 16:9 compression ratio...

------------------
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-29-2000, 02:25 PM:

Jason -- That 16:9 monitor will really up the price. As an alternative, consider a Sony Wega that can show 16:9 on the regular 4:3 CRT --- it will show all the resolution available on the "squeezed" DVD formats. (Wish I had one).

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 12-29-2000, 02:38 PM:

Again,
Thanks for the recommendation the the WEGA. I've looked at them (not in detail) and after reading many reviews online at audioreview.com, I am no longer leaning toward the WEGA. At any rate, we have a Circuit City opening in town in the next few weeks, so it'll be time to hang out there and decide what I want....
Those WEGA's are damn cool looking tho..

Posted by Martin Frandsen (Member # 74) on 12-30-2000, 12:24 PM:

Also try; http://www.hometheaterforum.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi this is a great site!

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-30-2000, 09:18 PM:

I really "want" to like Sony products. I think they make really good products. My problem is reliability. Face it. Sony doesn't have a very good track record in the "quality control" department like they used to. ( I hear it's got something to do with Tin-Bismuth solder they are using... in order to get the lead out of their production process.)

Still... when I go looking at TVs and VCRs, Sony is at the top of my list. It's just that companies like Toshiba and Matsushita (the Panasonic companies as a whole) and Mitsubishi are now factoring in to my decisions.

Having said that, I will DEFINATELY stay away from Phillips / Magnavox (Owned by the same company now.) Their stuff is TERRIBLE. I call them "Maggot-Box". Far worse than Sony, quality-wise. I guess that puts Sony in the middle of the pack. They used to be at the top.

Again, that WEGA looks FINE! So do the XBRs and the XBR-2's (WEGA would classify as XBR-3 , I think.) Even the "S" and "V" models are pretty good. I'd just do a little more comparison shopping when looking at the "lower" lines.

Do I make sene, here?

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 12-30-2000, 10:16 PM:

The only thing I don't like about the WEGAs is many I've seen have quite bad color convergence, which is noticeable in the corners of the picture. One of my friends bought one and I put up a dot pattern from Video Essentials and the 3 primary colors were so far apart from each other than one color ended up making a distinct dot in the lower right corner!

I have an XBR that I bought back in 1993 and the only feature it doesn't have that I want is the 16:9 mode.

On these WEGA TVs, be sure to turn VM off and set the sharpness properly (1/4 to 1/3 from the left end). On older Sonys, like mine, SVM is not turned off until the sharpness is run all the way down, which is actually the correct setting for it on my particular set. Video Essentials has a test pattern that can help you set the sharpness properly.

Evans

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 12-30-2000, 11:08 PM:

Having worked in my previous life at the local cable station doing tech-work I have to say hands down the BEST company that manufactures Video equipment is JVC.

------------------
I love to smoke I smoke seventhousand packs a day and I'm never F*&ing quittin!-- Denis Leary

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 12-31-2000, 12:01 AM:

Does your dvd player have the individual outputs for the digital sound i.e. 6 channels 6 outputs, or does it just have the coaxl or optical outputs. If it has 6 outputs then try this. If you already own a receiver that has dolby pro logic 4 channels do the following. take the left and right surround outputs and plug them into the left and right inputs of one of the componet imputs on the receiver (cd, ld, vcr). Next from this receiver run three speaker wires for left center and surround to three rear speakers. You will need to purchas an extra rear speaker for the center channel. Play the test tones from the receiver to ballance out the rear channels. Keep your other surround speakers and hook them up to your new receiver. They will be used for only four channel playback. once you get your sound balanced out for all channels put your favorite dvd with the best sound effects in. If you have Air Force One this one is perfect. Now you have full holosonic sound.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 12-31-2000, 09:56 AM:

Jason:

I hope that your Sony amp is built better than the one that I have. Mine is an STR-D715 with Pro-Logic, and 100 watts per channel. Just after the warranty expired, I had a channel go out. There was bad soldering all over one side of the power amp PC board. Thankfully, though, no other problems have surfaced.

I've got a 1992 27" XBR that looks great even though it was dropped before I got it. (This seems to be the way that I get my best equipment!) I had to do some major PC repairs around the flyback transformer, and replace the regulator IC on the power supply board, and install a small fan to keep the IC from cooking again, which after 7 years, it has not.

After I got it running again, I had to do a minor convergence alignment. Sonys are a breeze for me in this department. I used to align old RCA type CRT's with the 12 or so adjustments. The Sony has not drifted at all since 1993.

I hooked a DVD player up and thought that the image thru the S-video input was outstanding. Much better than the 1994 standard 27" Sony that I use for this WebTV system in my bedroom.

Good luck with the new system. I am getting access to a 400 watt JVC system very soon that will allow me to move my Sony amp over to the theater system. The Holmes will sound GREAT! (pant, pant!)

So, Jason, How do you like Myrtle in the winter?

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-31-2000, 10:11 AM:

Sean -- are you talking about professional or consumer JVC equipment? Most of the professional Sony video stuff (though I have only really dealt with the 3/4" machines...no Betacam or anything "good" like that) is pretty decent. The consumer-grade equipment seems to vary from good to below-average; I have a bottom-of-the-line Sony consumer CD player that is probably about 6-7 years old which works great.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 01-01-2001, 11:25 PM:

Bruce: Myrtle is nice in the off-season (winter). I have time to catch up on all the stuff that I let slide during the other 9 months...

Darryl: I'm using the component outputs on the DVD. I will be using Optical once the new STRDE945 gets here 1/4/01.

Sony equip. has definitely slid downhill over the last few years. They still have good stuff at decent prices. Their ES line is GREAT stuff from everything I've heard, but I'm not into paying that much for SONY. I currently have a SONY STRD-1015 Pro-logic unit which will go into the bedroom once the new unit gets here. Never had a problem with it after 5 years. I do have a SONY VCR that had a bad power supply after like 4 years..

I can only hope that I get the same satisfaction out of the new TV (whatever it may be) that I have gotten out of my Mitsubishi 27". I bought it 12 years ago as a floor model for right at $800. People thought I was CRAZY... but they have gone through two or three TV's and I still have the same one..

------------------
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 01-02-2001, 07:26 AM:

I'll echo your endorsement of Mistsubishi Jason. I've got a 37" my dad bought at least 12 years ago. Picture is still as great as it was then (like I mean, for a TV!). It's been moved 3 or 4 times (usually by about 4 guys - heavy sucker). Great set. Don't want to jinx it, but will we get 20 years out of them?

Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 01-02-2001, 10:00 PM:

Before I get a digital sound reciever, im gonnado 2 things:

1. wait till i can afford it.

2. wait till they figure out the best configuration for the center surround. They are making revievers with the center surround for pretty good prices ($500 - $600), but they havent figured out the best way to set it up. I read about it in some home theatre magazine, but i cant remember the name. ill have to look it up and post it later.

about Phillips, I bought one of their dvd players and havent had any problems with it.

What kind of problems have you had with their products?

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-02-2001, 10:24 PM:

Before I was in the movie business I was a TV salesman in a department store. I saw a whole lot of returns on Magnavox products. Then Philips and Magnavox merged and we started having the same thing happen to them.

Their products became a lot more "plastic". A lot of funky case designs and no real improvements in the "guts", where it counts. All flash and no bang. The user interfaces became a lot more clunky. You would have to push wierd combinations of buttons or go through a whole string of menus to change a simple setting like programming a channel or changing the color.

There were a lot of quality control problems like boards dying for no appearent reason. The picture would go black or would have black lines all across the screen. The customer would show me in the store and I would write up the repair order and send it in. Two months later it would come back marked, "C.N.D.P". (Couldn Not Duplicate Problem.) The customer would take it home and a week later I would be speaking to an irate customer on the phone.

After a while I started actively steering people away from their products. Some people would think I was trying to "upsell" them and buy it anyway. I would be talking to them on the phone a month later... "Why doesn't my remote work?"

It applied to almost all their products. TVs, VCRs, stereos, CD players... the works. Boom boxes were the worst.

The only thing worse was this one model of Aiwa mini stereos with a 6-disk "elevator" mechanism. Disks were ALWAYS getting stuck in them. Of course people would have to send the thing in for repairs, disks and all, only to have the thing be in the shop for 2 months. Then 1/2 the time they wouldn't get their disks back. It got so I would take the thing in the back room and extricate the disks myself.

Now I have a job where I get PAID to do that crap. Seems like old times!

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 01-02-2001, 11:54 PM:

I agree with you Randy Magnavox is crap and I had to find out the hard way. I bought a vcr once had it for two months and the dam thing started chewing up tapes. Years ago they were a quality brand. As far a receivers with the center channel built into the unit for the rear surround I have not read about these. The only thing I have read about are two types of external systems. One I think was the smart circle surround home system. I can't remember the other. I mentioned a second way to do this in an earlier post. But you need the abillity to plug in the left and right surround outputs into a seperat receiver. It is cheaper than buying one of the seperat units I mentioned here. There may be receivers now that have the descrete rear center channels on them that only work with encoded dts dvd's that have the actual center rear channel on them.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 01-05-2001, 08:50 AM:

Years ago, I was an AUTHORIZED Magnavox SERVICE CENTER operator (boo hiss)

Phillips had just taken over when I signed on... I got to see the crummy circuitry and underrated parts that were in the Fort Wayne designs that helped kill Maggotbox. At first, Phllips seemed to be an improvement, but over time, everything has gone downhill. Starting with the C8 chassis, they went with a weak "switched mode power supply" that would take-out a load of parts when it failed. This was on the TV lines.

Here's what I was told about the Phillips lines:

Phillips- High end/ high price
Magnavox- Nice cabinets
Sylvania- Glitzy and high tech looking
Philco- Loss leader (bottom of the line)

Funny. They all used the same basic chassis from year to year....

The reason that Magnavox VCR's were so good is that they were built by Matsushita (Panasonic) for years. Now most are by Funai.

I have a lightning-struck Mitsubishi TV that I fixed and gave to my parents. It runs great.

The AIWA remarks are dead-on. That is some of the worst junk to hit the consumer markets. I know. I've repaired many of them.

Just try to get replacement speakers for a boombox!!

Favorite Brands:

Mitsubishi
Toshiba
Hitachi (for their Ultravision PTV's)
JVC
Panasonic

WORST:

RCA/Proscan
Funai/Orion
Sears store brands (LXI, etc)
Zenith/Goldstar
...And the list goes on.....

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-05-2001, 03:54 PM:

I agree with that. I also used to not like Zenith but compared to Maggotbox they are like gold.

RCA has its good days and its bad days.

People used to ask me things like "What's the BEST brand to buy?" My stock answer (being a SALESMAN and all) was, "If you stick with a name brand, you can't go wrong..."

...with the above qualifications, that is...