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Thread: £3000 to spend on a new set-up, don't know where to start.

  1. #1
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    £3000 to spend on a new set-up, don't know where to start.

    My Dad is getting a new apartment soon for the odd occasion when he's actually in the country and he's asked me to look into getting a new TV setup and has a budget of about £3000. Unfortunately my knowledge on the subject is fairly limited so I was hoping you lot in the know could give me a helping hand.

    Basically he's after:

    - LCD or Plasma TV. Good quality = win. I think you got that from the budget though. Is http://www.dealtime.co.uk/xPO-TH_42PWD7UY any good or...not? I think 42" is the max size...if that.
    - DVD Recorder. Would like it to include a multi-region and possibly include a harddrive. I've seen a few couple of Sony ones that can be multi-region unlocked with using the handset, however it's not really been proved that the code works. Does anyone else make DVD Recorders with built in harddrives?
    - Cinema Surround Kit. I'm fairly stumped with this one, sound isn't my thing. I can't tell the difference between a £100 and £1000 system, what should I be looking out for?
    - Freeview Decoder. Well, they are all pretty much the same aren't they? Just look a bit different and have a few extra things like a TV guide.

    Be used for watching TV and DVD, and Gaming.

    Cheers.

    </noob>

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    make sure you get a HD-Ready TV so it will work with all the technology coming out next year.

  3. #3
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    ok, heres the advice i'm gonna give

    find a very good local hifi shop that has what the sort of things you want (ie plasmas, dvd recorders, and surround sound gubbins)

    give them a call, and explain your curcumstance, and arrange a time for yourself to go in and sample what they've got. this will give them a chance to set up different options in their viewign room for you. take along yer fav dvd or 2, and a mate if you value their opinion. have a good watch/listen of all the kit, and decide what you want.. if you honestly find you cant notice the difference between £100 and £1000 of speakers in there, then get the £100 set - ignore the prices and go for what you want. dont be worried about imposing on the shop - they should be glad to do this for you..

    on your budget, i would look at getting something (pricewise) in the region of £2000 for the plasma (That one you have suggested looks good - i've never personally watched it though. this place -> http://www.homecinemachoice.com/cgi-...layreviews.php has a very good directory of online reviews, but dont take what they say as gold - you might not notice what they do. then spend £300 on yerDVD, £300 on yer speakers, and the other £400 should be spent on cables (cables should amount to around 10% of any puchase - sounds like a lot doesnt it, but it does make sense), the freeview box (sony do an apparently very good one for around £80) and stands and so on (wall mounting looks sexier on a lcd).

    i'd think that a 42" plasma with reasonable quality is within your pricerange. you do want to make sure it has hdmi (basically the new scart) and component video in. depending on how much of a rush you are in, it might be worth waiting and getting a hd-compatible disk burner, but i honstly dont know when they are coming out

    finally, avforums.com is a very good place for a chat to people who also have far too much money..

    i'm spending £900 on my new setup (delivery times on big kit is a right pita - a week ) which i thought was a lot.. but good luck sah with your purchase..

    if you cant find a hifi shop near you, richer sounds has a very large selection of plasmas in all its shops, so they're worth a look. you could get the rest of the kit too if you wanted..

    from what i remember about reviews, this would be a reasonable starting point :
    http://ws4.richersounds.com/showprod...=HITA-42PD7200
    http://ws4.richersounds.com/showprod...pid=JVC-DRMH30
    http://ws4.richersounds.com/showprod...ARA-SR4400-BLK
    http://ws4.richersounds.com/showprod...TANN-FX5.1-SIL


    plus some cables/stands and the sony freeview box

    final point, dont go anywhere near currys/dixons etc. they will take all yer money and leave you with s**te if you awnt a chain then sevenoaks sound and vision are quite good
    hughlunnon@yahoo.com | I have sigs turned off..

  4. #4
    Spider pig, spider pig
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    Plasmas - I believe this Pioneer and this Panasonic are currently the reccomended ones to look at, supposedly the Pioneer is a little nicer than the Panasonic, but then it is about £200 more expensive. Those are the two I'd start looking at though, maybe from Sevenoaks Sound and Vision, or a similar local Hi-Fi shop that will let you look at the equipment. Both of those TVs I believe come with Freeview as well, so you would have that aspect sorted.

    As to buying a DVD recorder etc, why not get Sky+160? For the extra cost of a DVD-R with built in HDD, you could pay for Sky subscription for a year, and have all the extra channels and the convenience of Sky+.

    This would also then free you up a bit to buy a HD ready DVD player -seems almost silly not to if you're spending extra to get a HD ready plasma.

    If you didn't like this route then I would consider the Panasonic series of DVD-Rs with HDDs. Pansonic seem to be pretty good when it comes to visual stuff.

    Audio-wise, it is worth getting it right, but only worth spending as much as makes a difference to you. More expensive isn't always better, and anything separates compared to an out-of-the-box system will blow it away. For an amplifier, I have tried two Pioneer amps, a Yamaha amp, and a Cambridge Audio amplifier, and found that the Cambridge Audio was better than even the £300+ Pioneer amp and was at least keeping up with the £450 Yamaha, and is only £250, only on sale I believe at Richer Sounds. It still is probably worth listening to a slightly more expensive Yamaha and seeing if you think the Yamah is worth spending the extra, but, in my opinion, it wasn't.

    Speakers are a bit harder to get right. I spent ages in Sevenoaks listening to What Hi-Fi 5 star rated speakers, and one's that some people on here love, but personally found them a bit harsh, and not very good with the upper-mid range so accentuating the harsh upper range. In the end I went with Kef Q series speakers - Q1s, Q9c, Qcompacts, and a cheapish Eltax sub (which booms really badly so a decent sub - probably the Mordaunt Short MS309 at £220ish - is on my shopping list). The other speakers I've found to be really good when I had a listen were Mordaunt Short's 900 series (haven't listened to the 300 series) - a bit cheaper than the KEFs, but still very nice, and the B&W DM600 series.

    It can be worth looking on eBay for speakers - if they're in good condition and relatively new there's not too much as can go wrong with them, and you can save loads of money that way. Speakers are probably the only hi-fi thing I'd buy off there though, in case all the complicated electronics goes wrong on the other stuff.

    As for cables, I would budget for them as even the cheapest can cost quite a few quid - the costs all add up quite quickly. Speaker cable wise, I'd personally buy Richer Sounds 69p/m stuff, its not bell wire but I really can't tell the difference between that and £5/m stuff (I know, I got some expensive stuff thrown in with my KEF speakers). Audio interconnects, I'd buy something above what comes in the box, but not too much. If you have DVD player that plays DVD-As or SACDs you'll need an analogue connection from you DVD player to your amp of 3 pairs of stereo interconnects, I'd say it was worth spending at least a fiver each on these, so £15 in total. I would also buy a digital connection to your amp for watching movies etc. It is probably worth buying 'decent' visual cables as well. A digital cable is a digital cable as far as I'm concerned, so with them I'd just buy what looks cheapest, rather than £100/m monitor cable! It is worth getting a well built RGB or two (video only) cable (see the offers Legin76 of AudioVisuals Online has put up). There's no point having a SCART cable with some of the cable taken up by audio the TV wont use, if you have a separate sound system.

    I think thats about the limit of my knowledge, but only buy something if it is wirth the extra on the cheaper stuff if the extra is worth it to you. I went in to Richer Sounds and saw a £1300 42" plasma that looked better than some of the £2000 panels to my eye, so personally I would have got that. On the other hand, I found it worth getting more expensive speakers as I wouldn't have been happy with the cheaper ones. Shop around, ignore the advice of What H-Fi as it's actually quite rubbish, and pop into Sevenoaks and Richer Sounds and see what you can find. Enjoy buying it as well, it's great fun building a first proper home cinema setup!

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alex
    More expensive isn't always better, and anything separates compared to an out-of-the-box system will blow it away.
    thats a very sweeping statement..

    at a given price point, particularly below £5-600, a 1box setup can often be better than separate amp/speakers because its all been balenced and designed to go together from the word go. not many people make all-in-1 systems any more, but those that do are perfeclty reasonable, and often offer more convinience and better looks than a multi-box setup
    hughlunnon@yahoo.com | I have sigs turned off..

  6. #6
    Spider pig, spider pig
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    Convenience and looks, yes, but very few companies are good at making DVDs, amps, and speakers, most are good at only one. Also, you lose a lot of adaptibility generally, as well as any upgradeability. If its designed to go together, then it won't go well with any other parts.

    You are right though, it was a sweeping statement - it is a general truth if not a universal one.

  7. #7
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    Have a look at www.avforums.com
    You will find out what kit is good and what is not on there!
    Good bunch of lads and you can get an honest opinion on there.

  8. #8
    Drop it like it's hot Howard's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alex
    Convenience and looks, yes, but very few companies are good at making DVDs, amps, and speakers, most are good at only one. Also, you lose a lot of adaptibility generally, as well as any upgradeability. If its designed to go together, then it won't go well with any other parts.

    You are right though, it was a sweeping statement - it is a general truth if not a universal one.
    Are we talking about "home cinema in a box" type things?

    If so, seperates will 99% of the time be an improvement... How can those little tiny satellite speakers with 2" drivers produce anything nearly as dynamic as a half decent set of small ish (and bigger ) bookshelf speakers with >5" drivers?
    Home cinema: Toshiba 42XV555DB Full HD LCD | Onkyo TX-SR705 | NAD C352 | Monitor Audio Bronze B2 | Monitor Audio Bronze C | Monitor Audio Bronze BFX | Yamaha NSC120 | BK Monolith sub | Toshiba HD-EP35 HD-DVD | Samsung BD-P1400 BluRay Player | Pioneer DV-575 | Squeezebox3 | Virgin Media V+ Box
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  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Howard
    Are we talking about "home cinema in a box" type things?

    If so, seperates will 99% of the time be an improvement... How can those little tiny satellite speakers with 2" drivers produce anything nearly as dynamic as a half decent set of small ish (and bigger ) bookshelf speakers with >5" drivers?
    its because the bass doesnt go to the small satilite speakers. it goes to the sub, because your ears cant tell where its coming from.

    dont even pretend that a £300 separates setup will be anything like a £2000 home cinema-in-a-box setup
    hughlunnon@yahoo.com | I have sigs turned off..

  10. #10
    Drop it like it's hot Howard's Avatar
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    Yes the bass does... We know that... But a full-range driver is gonna be better at lower midrange than that of a tiny little speaker.

    And I can't think of any £2000 home cinema in a box setups except from the likes of Bose, which are crap. Lol
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  11. #11
    Now with added sobriety Rave's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 5lab
    and the other £400 should be spent on cables (cables should amount to around 10% of any puchase - sounds like a lot doesnt it, but it does make sense),


    Tarffie, DO NOT spend £400 on cables, it would be an utter waste of money. For any analogue video connections between components, you might want to spend £20-50 on some cables that are well made with good shielding, but try them out first to see if they make a difference, and definitely ignore any salespeople trying to point out differences- the human mind is very suggestible. For all the audio connections just use the supplied cables, for the speakers Maplin's 79-strand stuff is fine at around 60p/metre.

    Here's some more reading on why cables are a waste of money:

    http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=18031

  12. #12
    Drop it like it's hot Howard's Avatar
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    £400 on cables? Blimey. What a waste
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  13. #13
    Now with added sobriety Rave's Avatar
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    This looks like a good product:

    http://audiovisual.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/...100304323.html

    It's a DVD/HD recorder and it supports Freeview- so you're recording the original digital signal and thus don't lose any quality. It also has an HDMI connection so that you can connect it to a plasma/LCD screen with an HDMI or DVI connection. That way the signal stays digital right up to the point at which it's displayed for ultimate quality.

    You could get another freeview box if you want to watch one channel and record another.

  14. #14
    Asking silly questions menthel's Avatar
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    A panny plasma is a good idea. You can get good deals for them with free stand and dvd recorder. The TV has a freeview tuner built in and if you connect it up correctly to the dvd player then on the 7 day epg you get a record this program option!
    Not around too often!

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rave


    Tarffie, DO NOT spend £400 on cables, it would be an utter waste of money. For any analogue video connections between components, you might want to spend £20-50 on some cables that are well made with good shielding, but try them out first to see if they make a difference, and definitely ignore any salespeople trying to point out differences- the human mind is very suggestible. For all the audio connections just use the supplied cables, for the speakers Maplin's 79-strand stuff is fine at around 60p/metre.

    Here's some more reading on why cables are a waste of money:

    http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=18031
    thats a bit of a misquote.. what i actually said was
    Quote Originally Posted by 5lab
    the other £400 should be spent on cables (cables should amount to around 10% of any puchase - sounds like a lot doesnt it, but it does make sense), the freeview box (sony do an apparently very good one for around £80) and stands and so on (wall mounting looks sexier on a lcd).
    so that'd be about £1-200 on cables..

    for video i'd reccomend using component video (as it'll enable prog scan). i'd personally not reccomend naything that comes with the box (you probably wont get anything IN the box these days), i perosnally always see a decent quality push in upgrading up to low to mid-end cables.. not more than £30 per interconnect regularly. the more you spend, the less difference you see, just like anything else - i mean the difference between a £10k and a £20k car is huge, but between a £100k car and a £110k car is next to nowt.
    hughlunnon@yahoo.com | I have sigs turned off..

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    I wish someone had told me this when I got into hi-fi, I could have saved myself quite a bit.

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