{"id":1784,"date":"2013-03-01T11:42:51","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T16:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/?page_id=1784"},"modified":"2022-06-28T14:44:46","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T18:44:46","slug":"home-theater","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/home-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’s Home Theater"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Current Hardware<\/strong><\/p>\n

TCL 65R625 LED 4K UHD Smart Roku TV<\/strong> – A step up in size from the Vizio that we replaced. I was a little skeptical of the TCL brand but I couldn’t find any bad reviews. I’m really happy with the picture and 4K UHD from UHD Blu Rays and streaming services is great.<\/p>\n

Yamaha\u00a0RX-V479BL receiver<\/strong> – The audio is comparable to my old 1050 but I would say that it’s a little “crisper”. I’m not sure if this is due to a bit more treble or if it’s the result of the automated set up. Whatever it is, I like it so far. Being able to run everything through the receiver and using CEC has greatly simplified the usability. My kids and wife can now turn on the TV, push a button on the remote to watch Blu Rays, Netflix or Hulu apps on the TV or content from our home network on the WD Live TV and away they go – I don’t have to walk them through every step.<\/p>\n

Another benefit of this receiver is that I am able to listen to my SACDs again! In some of our recent conversations, my brother reminded me about them so I dug out the ones I still have and took a listen. Very nice!<\/p>\n

Sony UBPX800 4K UHD Blu-ray Player<\/strong> – Does everything it’s supposed to do (including SACDs!) and does it well.<\/p>\n

Mi-Box – <\/b>I replaced our WD-Live box with a Mi-Box that I picked up for like $30 a couple years ago. I pretty much only use this for watching videos that I have stored on my networked PC although it’s Android app support is great.<\/p>\n

\n

A Little Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve been interested in home theater since my teens when I worked in a video rental store. One day, not long\u00a0after the movie Top Gun<\/strong> was released on VHS (probably about 1987), the owner of the store invited me to his house and demonstrated his “state of the art” home theater. Although there was no surround sound and the picture on his 52″ projection TV was grainy and washed out, I was blown away by the large screen and audio coming from his receiver and speakers!<\/p>\n

My interest waned for a while after that (mostly because I was in high school and had no money!) until, in the early 90’s, I learned that George Lucas was planning on releasing all 3 original Star Wars films on LaserDisc in a Special Edition (the first of many!). I hunted down information about this and pre-ordered my copy at the local video store. The fact that I didn’t own a LaserDisc player was unimportant to me – I needed this set!<\/p>\n

The day before the Star Wars boxed set was released, I bought a LaserDisc player and connected it to my relatively new JVC Dolby Digital receiver (I was still using this equipment until 2001!) and found some cheap speakers to connect to the rear channel. My friends and I were impressed with the picture, but especially by the sound. The most important thing to us was that we were watching Star Wars on LaserDisc!<\/p>\n

Anyway, my LaserDisc collection grew, but my system was never really upgraded. Sometime in the late 90s, I picked up the APEX AD-600A DVD player and “wedged” that into my outdated system. I started reading more about DVD, which lead to The Home Theater Forum where I was delighted to learn about the current home theater technologies – we had come a long way since 1991! I’ve lurked on the Forum for a while and learned a lot.<\/p>\n

Armed with my new-found knowledge (and wedding gifts!), I made the first upgrade to my home theater. I picked up the JVC 32D302 32″ direct view TV which was\u00a0the focal point of the theater. I have a plan for future upgrades as well. Currently, my design philosophy is “Low price – high quality.” In other words, I am upgrading within my means. Space is also a bit of a consideration – my wife and I recently purchased a house however, the new place does not have room for a dedicated HT room, so we’re fitting our entertainment area into the family room for now.<\/p>\n

Update (12.2.2020)<\/strong>: Due to a little accident on the part of my daughter’s friend back in August, we replaced our Vizio TV with a TCL 65R625<\/strong> 65 inch UHD set. It’s a nice TV and the extra screen size is appreciated, if not a little overwhelming. The built-in Roku apps are very handy. I also added a subwoofer so we finally have real 5.1 audio. I purchased the Klipsch R12-SW sub<\/strong> when it was on sale for $149 ($100 off!). I really just got it hooked up a few days ago but, although it’s subtler than I expected, there is a definite increase in the low-end we were missing before.<\/p>\n

\"broken

Damn those Wiimotes!!<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Old Hardware:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vizio M55-C2 UHD LCD display<\/strong> –\u00a0Although I was really just looking for a larger, flatter screen I went with a UHD (not HDR, though) display just because the prices were so similar. It almost didn’t pay to get a HD when, for just $100 or so, I could move to UHD. Not much to say – I’m pretty impressed with this display so far! Updated (4.28.16)<\/strong>: Lots of changes to my set up! Finally got a bigger display! After much planning and waiting, I finally got the okay to dump the old CRT and move to a flat panel. I decided on a Vizio M55-C2 UHD<\/strong>. The price point (especially after doing a price match at Best Buy) was perfect and the performance was reported to be quite good. The new TV needed a new stand so we ordered the Sonax West Lake TV component bench<\/strong> from Target. My wife never liked the “bachelor pad” look of\u00a0the Salamder rack so she\u00a0is much happier now.<\/p>\n

JVC 32D302 TV<\/strong>\u00a0– This is about as nice a non Hi-Def television as you could find these days for under $1000. It doesn’t do a lot of unecessary stuff (no picture-in-picture, etc.), but what it does, it does very well. Here are the hightlights:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Anamorphic “Squeeze” Trick – Via the service menu, the aperture can be adjusted to allow anamporphic DVDs to be viewed in their native format. This yields about 25% more vertical resolution! In other words, anamorphic DVDs look INCREDIBLE! I was sceptical about the amount of improvement that I would see by making this change, but my doubts are gone now! JVC could have really improved this set by making this mode more easily accessible, but at least it’s available. More information!<\/li>\n
  • Component Input – 1 set of component inputs.<\/li>\n
  • S-Video Input – 1 S-Video input.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Sony KV-32HS510 TV<\/strong> – When my good friends sold their home in PA and moved to North Carolina, they offered me this TV so I quickly accepted. This was one of the few HiDef CRT televisions that came out in the early 2000s before LCD and Plasma began to come down in price. Apparently, there aren’t too many of these around anymore because everyone flocked to the flat panel displays in favor of the giant block of plastic and glass! I can see why that would be the case after lugging it from my friend’s living room and into my car and then from the car into my own living room. At 175 lbs, this thing is a beast. I am really pleased with the picture. It’s limited to 1080i but the lack of motion blur and the deep blacks make up for any other issues. Sure, I’d like something sleek and modern looking and with a larger picture but this TV packs a lot of performance for the price.<\/p>\n

    Sony DVP NS755V<\/strong> – The NS755 is a feature-rich DVD player. There are a lot of video and audio options that I have not even begun to explore. Out of the box, the home theater output looks and sounds great. As far as video goes – I haven’t notice a huge difference from my old player – other than its ability more quickly find and play discs that often failed or did not display properly on the Apex.<\/p>\n

    The SACD capability is a great find as well. After listening to the SACD samplers that came with the player, I purchased a few more (Dark Side of the Moon, Police, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons) in order to further investigate this new format. Preliminary listening has revealed a great difference in sound quality of regular\u00a0CDs! I can’t yet put my finger on what that difference is, but I guess I would have to say there is a “fuller”, more realistic sound.<\/p>\n

    Old NS755V\u00a0 Update (3.13.03)<\/strong>: I ordered my Sony DVP NS755V progressive scan DVD\/SACD player from OneCall.com. I did a fair amount of research on what player to replace my tired and somewhat cheap Apex player with. Since the much lauded Panasonic series of players are hard to find and often suffer from quality issues, I decided to go with the Sony which is just now beginning to receive attention from HT folks.<\/p>\n

    JBL N-Center II:<\/strong> I ordered and received my new center channel speaker on 6.23.03. It’s not the PSB that I planned on getting, but it was much less expensive! I ended up ordering the JBL N-Center II from OneCall.com for about $99! The deciding factor was measuring the top of my TV and realizing that I need a fairly shallow speaker in order to fit securely on top of my set. When I get a larger TV, I will upgrade all the speakers. I notice a great difference in the quality of 5.1 soundtracks now. True 5.0 at last! Along with the speaker, we also picked up a new Panasonic PVV4623S VCR. Our old one was beginning to make some not-too-healthy noises, so we moved it downstairs.<\/p>\n

    Salamander Archetype 5.0 Rack<\/strong> – I did a lot of searching for home theater furniture that is both high quality and has a high WAF (wife acceptance factor). I ran across Salamander Designs mentioned several times on the HTF. Their website is great and gives the customer an idea of their high level of quality – as well as their high prices. I found the Archetype 5.0 avaiable on Audio Advisor for about $150 – about half of what this piece retails for!
    \nHigh quality – yes!
    \nPain in the ass to assemble – yes!
    \nLooks nice – very!<\/p>\n

    Outlaw 1050 6.1 Receiver<\/strong> – My first impression of the 1050 is that it’s built like a tank! At almost 40 pounds, this thing far outweighs my old receiver. The 1050 is one of the few 6.1 capable receivers in the $500 price range. It does Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS and it will also decode 6.1 soundtracks using Outlaw’s own proprietary decoding scheme. Although there are some newer formats (DD-EX, DTS-ES, Pro-Logic II) that aren’t supported this piece of equipment is an excellent value.<\/p>\n

    After living with the 1050 for a while, I can say that I have never heard surround like this before! My old Infinity RS3000 speakers have never sounded so good. In fact, listening to music and movies at much higher volumes caused the foam surrounds on my old Infinity RS3000 speakers to disintegrate (my newly re-edged speakers sound great, by the way!). Bass was practically non existent on my old receiver, but now it really comes across loud and clear – not that a subwoofer wouldn’t help! Surround effects are very much enhanced as well.<\/p>\n

    Old Outlaw 1050 Update (11.02.02):<\/strong> Finally another upgrade! Yesterday, I brought home my Outlaw 1050! Thanks to a fellow Home Theater Forum member who had recently upgraded and was willing to part with his old gear for a very reasonable price, I’m now the proud owner of this beautiful 6.1 receiver. I’ll be hooking everything up within a day or two – just in time to check out the new DVD releases of Attack of the Clones and The Fellowship of the Ring extended edition!<\/p>\n

    Sony BDP-S570 Blu-ray\/DVD Player<\/strong> – After we got a HD display, it was time to move to Blu-ray! I did quite a bit of research and found a lot of good reviews for this player. It doesn’t do anything incredibly special although it does have SACD playback as well.<\/p>\n

    WD Live TV<\/strong> – I replaced my original modded XBOX running XBMC with one of these little devices after the XBOX succumbed to a lightning strike. The box connects seamlessly to our network and streams just about anything – even BR iso files! 1080p video with support for digital audio is a big plus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My Current Hardware TCL 65R625 LED 4K UHD Smart Roku TV – A step up in size from the Vizio that we replaced. I was a little skeptical of the TCL brand but I couldn’t find any bad reviews. I’m … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1784","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2052,"href":"https:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1784\/revisions\/2052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/don.oninohana.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}