HDTVs?

[drfsupercenter]

Does your friend's 360 have a HDMI output? It must be a recent one, since the one I have does not have HDMI (I'm really tempted to swap it for one that does, since I use it to play HD DVD).

I'm not sure. When I was at his house, I didn't see the back of it... but I'm pretty sure it does as he asked me whether it makes sense to get one.

RCA is the worst connection you can have in terms of quality. It will be blurry, full of interference artifacts and the colors will not be that great. The next best thing is S-Video. Then component. And finally, HDMI.

I thought coaxial was the worst. What about HD channels, don't those use coax too? And if not, what do they use? (I thought the point of getting Digital Ready was so you didn't need a cable box... those things get on my nerve)

I think for most people, a 32" to 40" screen, with a simple 5.1/7.1 system (the ones with small speakers, not those floor standing ones) will be good enough. The next bracket would 50" to 65" + AV receiver and 5.1/7.1 set of high quality home theatre speakers/subwoofer. Then you have people using front projection and massive screens, in a dedicated home theatre room (complete with proper seating, and blackened windows).

The TV would go in the basement, so you don't need blackened windows... and I don't really need to make it that much like a theater, I just want some sort of surround. My friends both have surround and it looks like a relatively inexpensive setup. But what about the amplifier/reciever, do you need that if you have surround?

[admin]

I thought coaxial was the worst. What about HD channels, don't those use coax too? And if not, what do they use? (I thought the point of getting Digital Ready was so you didn't need a cable box... those things get on my nerve)

Coaxial outputs disappeared with the VCR, practically no device made after has it, with the exception of digital TV set top boxes (used to give older TVs digital TV). It is now primarily used for to carry analog/digital TV signals (including cable TV) in the AV field, and it's good for carrying these types of high frequency signals over distance, but not so good for things like AV connections between consoles and TVs. That's why consoles, DVD players and other similar devices only support composite, component or HDMI these days.

The TV would go in the basement, so you don't need blackened windows... and I don't really need to make it that much like a theater, I just want some sort of surround. My friends both have surround and it looks like a relatively inexpensive setup. But what about the amplifier/reciever, do you need that if you have surround?

The amp/receiver is what receives the audio signal from your DVD/HD player or games console (usually via toslink optical audio cable), and then it decodes the AC3 or DTS track and then outputs it (after amplification) to your 5/7 speakers + subwoofer. The "receiver" name comes from it including a radio tuner (AM/FM/Digital), separating it from plain old amplifiers, but these it just basically refers to your typical surround sound amplifier.

The newer range of AV receivers has HDMI input, so they can act as your HDMI switch (multiple HDMI in, one HDMI out to your TV). And as such, they can also receive (via HDMI) higher bandwidth audio such as PCM 5.1 (toslink only supports PCM 2.0 due to insufficient bandwidth). Some will also decode the newer Blu-ray/HD DVD audio formats, such as Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, DTS Master Audio ...

My advice for buying a sound system, and this is a bit off topic, is to spend most of your money on the speakers. A good set of speakers (and subwoofer) will last a lot longer than all your other sound components, so it's worth the initial extra investment. AV receiver technology has undergone major changes over the last few decades (my first amp was a Dolby Surround one, it did not even support Dolby Pro-Logic), but speaker technology hasn't change all that much.

[drfsupercenter]

Coaxial outputs disappeared with the VCR, practically no device made after has it, with the exception of digital TV set top boxes (used to give older TVs digital TV). It is now primarily used for to carry analog/digital TV signals (including cable TV) in the AV field, and it's good for carrying these types of high frequency signals over distance, but not so good for things like AV connections between consoles and TVs. That's why consoles, DVD players and other similar devices only support composite, component or HDMI these days.

So how do you get TV channels? Last time I checked, HDMI didn't support channel switching... and I don't like using cable boxes! (My current analog cable just uses coax from the wall to the TV)

My advice for buying a sound system, and this is a bit off topic, is to spend most of your money on the speakers. A good set of speakers (and subwoofer) will last a lot longer than all your other sound components, so it's worth the initial extra investment. AV receiver technology has undergone major changes over the last few decades (my first amp was a Dolby Surround one, it did not even support Dolby Pro-Logic), but speaker technology hasn't change all that much.

But can you plug the speakers in the back of the TV or something? I want them to turn up and down when I turn the TV's volume up and down.

[Chocol8y]

Assuming your question was related to Picture quality there are a myriad of things to look for...do a net search for info on the following.

1. Dot Crawl
2. Convergence
3. Pixellation
4. Flicker
5. Image Ghosting (not the anteanne type but the blurr/out of focus STILL IMAGE type)
5. Then one can proceed to blurr during movement.

Other things related to image quality namely quality/uniformity of screen...(surprisingly enough few people take this into accout - ref to self in a mirror, keepin your eyes on your reflection move left to right then up & down & see if there is any image distortion: same applies to TV screens) Anti Glare coatings, of course I stake no claim to being even close to an authority on Light properties n principles but one is often subject to overzealous marketing claims/ploys. Basic property of light regardless of spectrum is that there will be soft light around the edges (dispersion even in a vaccum) course & if not such is the nature of precieving through the human eye thus ANY TV no matter how sharp/bright/clear/well balanced will be completely artifact free. IF there were such a machine finally made one would have to watch it in an environment vaccous of dust, moisture and air with uncorrected natural and perfect vision etc etc. Imagine a sunset with countless beams of light & our eyes not being to diffuse em so perfection then would lie in distortion, diffusion and the artifacts the manufactures claim to eliminate besides giving us prolonged exposure to nahhty radation K I am steppin away from dis monitor NOW !

hmm sorry about the ramble.

[admin]

So how do you get TV channels? Last time I checked, HDMI didn't support channel switching... and I don't like using cable boxes! (My current analog cable just uses coax from the wall to the TV)


But can you plug the speakers in the back of the TV or something? I want them to turn up and down when I turn the TV's volume up and down.

I don't know what the situation is like in the US, but here in Australia, we have free-to-air digital TV (SD or HD). The roof top antenna receives the digital signal from the air and then transmits that through coaxial cable to the TV (if it has a built-in digital tuner) or the digital TV set top box (decoder), the decoder (either in the TV or in the set top box) will output the picture to the TV (internally, or through composite/component/HDMI if it's an external box). For old analog TV, you are only limited to coaxial (unless you use a VCR or something to switch channels). Most TVs these days will have built in digital tuners (at least here in Australia), so you just plug the coaxial into the TV and then use it normally (except the signal coming in is now digital, so there's no snowing or ghosting or anything like that - with digital, you either get a perfect picture or you don't get one at all, depending on your signal strength).

As for the speakers, your TV won't have the power to drive good speakers - that's why you need an amplifier, to give the speakers enough "power". As I mentioned before, for normal TV programs, I use the TV speakers. But when I want full surround sound, I'll turn the TV speakers off and use the surround amp/receiver and the full speaker system. It's not too much trouble at all.

[drfsupercenter]

Hmm, but if I'm not using a cable box, I still use coaxial for the digital stations?
Do the HD stations go over coax as well?

And that's what my friends do, I'm sure you can get used to it but it's just more equipment to worry about... my 27" CRT TV has an "out to subwoofer" thing with RCA plugs... does that do anything at all?

[admin]

Hmm, but if I'm not using a cable box, I still use coaxial for the digital stations?
Do the HD stations go over coax as well?

And that's what my friends do, I'm sure you can get used to it but it's just more equipment to worry about... my 27" CRT TV has an "out to subwoofer" thing with RCA plugs... does that do anything at all?

You'll have to check your local situation, since I don't really know how you get TV over in the US. If it's anything like in Australia, then you'll buy a new TV that has a digital tuner and you basically use the same antenna/aerial that you use for normal TV right now, and the same cable goes into the back of your new TV - the new TV will find and decode the digital signal found alongside the old analog signal, and then display the digital picture.

You can probably plug a subwoofer into your TV to offload some of the bass of the TV speakers to the subwoofer, but nothing beats a proper 5.1 system (sound, for me, is more than half of the movie "viewing" experience).

You won't believe how much equipment I have connected to my TV. Off the top of my head, I think there are 8 devices, 2 of which use HDMI (but my TV only has 1 HDMI input, so I use a HDMI switch), 4 uses component (but my TV only has 2 component inputs, so I use another comonent switch), 1 s-video, and 1 composite. 4 devices have digital sound output to my receiver, again, I have to rely on a switch because the receiver only has 2 optical inputs (luckily, my component switch includes an optical audio switch, and also a networking hub as I have about 4 devices that need ethernet, and only 1 ethernet port in the whole room). You can imagine the mess of cables ...

[drfsupercenter]

Hmm,

My settop DVD recorder has "digital" stuff, and it still shows my channels as analog. I used to get HD stations (oddly enough, since we only pay for analog cable!), but they realized their error and now we only get 1-99.
However, some people said that even with digital cable, only 100+ are actually digital... but I sure hope that isn't the case

I'm not trying to spend all my family's money on this setup, LOL... my grandma was looking at somewhere around $3000 for the whole thing, so we could either get a really good TV or spend half of that on speakers... is there any sense at getting an entry level $200 surround set?

[admin]

It all depends on what you want to do with the TV - if you watch a lot of DVDs, then a surround sound set up would be nice, but if it's mainly TV and gaming (especially with the Wii), then the TV speakers will probably be good enough. I guess you can always buy the sound stuff later on, since there's no point in having a good sound system if your TV is not up to scratch.

For $300, you can probably get yourself one of those 5.1 sets with smaller speakers, which will work fine if your room is not too big. Most people don't even have room for the big speakers anyway (and don't need/want the louder sound they offer). Even the ones with bigger speakers don't cost that much, and it even has HDMI (and 7.1 speakers too):

http://www.amazon.com/Onkyo-HT-SR800-Theater-Entertainment-System/dp/B000O8E8YW/ref=pd_sbs_auto?ie=UTF8&qid=1196561619&sr=8-31&tag=dvdloc8-20

[BR7]

Onkyo is great I have the Onkyo TX-SR504 and I am very pleased with it.I wish I would have spent $100 more and got the one with HDMI, I never thought I would have an HDTV this soon (live and learn).I did pick up the Vizio and that came with 2 HDMI and thats all I need for now so maybe it was for the better that I saved the $100

[admin]

I have an Onkyo receiver myself, but that was from a time when DTS was still the "new" format. The only problem with the Onkyo that I linked to is that it does not pass on audio through HDMI, which means you won't be able to enjoy the high def audio on Blu-ray/HD DVDs.

In order to enjoy the audio, you need a HDMI receiver that can accept audio through HDMI, and can either decode the high def codecs (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD ...), or can accept PCM 5.1 that Blu-ray/HD DVD players can output (after decoding the high def codecs onboard, or in some cases, the PCM soundtrack is on the disc itself).

[BR7]

My sound is hooked up through an optical cable, it has been a toss up of what my receiver shows on some BR discs it's DD 5.1 and others its PCM.I will wait till summer and upgrade my receiver then

[admin]

This guide is a nice read about future-proofing your next receiver purchase:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=738511

[drfsupercenter]

There's no such thing as an upsampling DVD recorder is there?

If not, I'll have to keep my normal recorder so I can still record stuff, and just get a totally seperate units...and then I'd have 2 working players...

--EDIT--

And we'd probably end up getting 5.1, not 7.1, due to the size of the room.

[admin]

There are DVD recorders that can also do DVD upscaling (through HDMI only, and sometimes through component for non CSS DVDs). The recorded content are not upscaled, they are just recorded in DVD/MPEG-2 format. So it's basically just a standard DVD recorder, except the DVD playback has upscaling.