I need help with my home theatre set up? What set up is best?

Question

I really need some advice. I decided to go with the Misubishi 73 inch LCD (WD73733) which I love. I wanted to find a home theatre set up that was good and reasonable. I found the "Denon" DHT-687BA which packs these components together: A Denon AVR-687 receiver, Denon DVD-557 player and Boston Accoustics 5.1 micro channel speaker system. I dont know much but I liked the price as it was clearance at 500 off and had outstanding reviews from users all over who seem to love the set up. I listened to it and it was great. Here is my concern: It has a ton of features but it does not have any HDMI inputs and 1 HDMI output. Should I be concerned and not get it? This thing has a ton of input output jacks (6 total S-Video, 3 component video in, 2 component out, 4 composite video in, 2 digital coaxial inputs, 2 TOSLINK inputs, 7 stereo audio inputs). Not sure what all these do but I reserved this cause of the deal and now Im concerned. Can someone please give me some advice?

Answer 1

samsung

Answer 2

First, don't buy it just because it's a "clearance" at $500 off.  Sure it may be convenient that it's a "combo" pack, but it looks like the included receiver is more of an entry level Denon.   Denon does make some nice receivers, this just doesn't happen to be one of them.    Today and in the near future, your going to be seeing more devices with HDMI, so being that this unit lacks it, that's a big negative there.   If your looking for simplicity for interconnecting with your TV, then I'd definitely recommend a receiver that can upconvert any of it's inputs to either component out or HDMI out.  The Onkyo TX-SR605 offers a lot of versatility for the price and even supports a 2nd zone for audio.   You can feed the receiver composite video, S-Video, Component and HDMI and it will output everything to your TV Via (1) HDMI cable.   Of course Denon has a model that does this stuff too, but it's a lot more money as well.  So personally, I would avoid going with a packaged deal and instead purchase the items seperately so that you can pick out better components.