What kind of home theatre system should I get?

Question

I have a budget of about $1500 and was wondering what the best surround sound system would be to purchase. I would like to know the name brand and if I should get 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1? Any suggestions would be helpful!

Answer 1

you should get a sony htddw1600

http://www.sony.com.au/homecinema/catalo...

http://www.cnet.com.au/hometheatre/homec...

Answer 2

I actually have the sony htddw1600 and agree it is definately worth it. I'm not sure what price it is in the US but in Australia it goes for around $1000-$1100. It has very good quality sound and the two sub woofers are great.

Answer 3

the sony they are mentioning is pretty good. It has a 6.2 set up. The subwoofers they have are not as good as one stand alone sub and 6 channel is useless. The speakers are very mediocre and the unit does not have advanced audio. If you have no intention of upgrading to blueray, this would be a good choice with a standard or upconverting standard def dvd player and it is in your price range. For about the same price, you could get true budget hifi. I'd say Pioneer is better and Onkyo as the best bang for the buck. Audiophiles consider Onkyo to be champagne on a beer budget. This will allow you to buy real speakers instead of HTIB speakers.

As far as 5.1, 6.1, 7.1.

6.1 is useless and there are almost no disks mixed that way. ALL halfway decent recivers will be 7.1 CAPABLE, but that does NOT mean you have to run it that way. 7.1 sounds awesome, but it is extremely wasteful from a listening room set up perspective.

I took down my 7.1 set up and am running 5.1 now. It passes the wife acceptance factor. Most families cannot afford to have the wasted space needed by a 7.1 system. To do a 7.1 you need a listening room length of at least 16-24 feet deep and a wife that will allow you to arrange the theatre seats (she let me buy those) in such a way as to properly place all four of the rear channels. Another reason to not go 7.1 is your 1500 budget. That will save you the extra 300-500 by not having to buy the second set of rears.

We have a 16 foot length x 20 width living room. I cannot justify the 4-6 feet wasted behind the seating for me to properly place the rear surround. It did'nt match my wifes idea of how a room should be decorated (but at least she let me buy the theatre seating). While I wanted 7.1, I had to agree with her that it was highly expensive from the wasted space point of view.

I wouldn't buy a HTIB, but would buy a decent reciever like the onkyo SR605 it features hdmi 1.3a, not 1.1 like other recievers and does Dolby® True HD, DTS-HD Master Audio the new state of the art for digital audio. a velodyne (their cheap series) or polk subwoofer and polk or boston fronts centers and rears. Use 12guage  generic speaker cable and hdmi cables from monoprice.