What's in your Home Theater?

[Joxer]

Originally Posted by 57

Beringer Destroyer

I found the speaker choice interesting. Haven't seen Castle much on this side of the pond.

I haven't posted my specs before, the speakers are kind of haphazard overall. I do have Castle Warwick front speakers, however. Other than that, a Paradigm centre and some yamaha rears, no sub still. I like the Castle's, even though they are on the small end of their range (roughly 15" high, x 9 x 9).

I was thinking about adding a sub, getting some new speakers for surround L/R, and retaining the Yamaha as surround back. I'm not that well versed in thing audiophile, and I'm sure I could do better by opening up the piggybank and getting a matched set of speakers, but I know I'd spend a fair bit more than the tiny matched sets. Also, no one seems to really be adding the surround back(s) into any matched sets - since the Panasonic only has power for 1 speaker I'd end up with needing half a pair.

Rest of the gear: TV: Toshiba 50H82, DVD: Panasonic RP-62, Reciever: Panasonic SA-HE200, VCR: Sony SLV-790HF

[Bassbonist]

Sharp 32 inch TV
JVC RX-7000V receiver
JBL N28-- Fronts
JBL N24-- Rears
JBL NCenter-- Center Channel
JBL 10inch Sub
Panasonic RV32.
Hitachi UX617 VCR
3 Motorola DCT2000 HTs

[sleemo]

No big addition, but I got a JVC HR-S5911U Super VHS VCR (for the wife's soaps) last weekend. It's supposed to put out S-VHS quality on standard (high quality) VHS tapes. I wasn't wowed by the quality, so I went out and got an S-VHS tape today from the Sony store. Anyone know who else sells S-VHS tapes, preferrably Maxell or can anyone recommend a good tape?

I got this model because it has a front panel S-Video input. This makes it very easy for me to disconnect my sat receiver from the TV and plug it into the VCR if I want to transfer something to tape. I would have started doing this with Sopranos season 4 if I had the VCR when it started.

[TomW]

OK with the addition of the TV I've finally got my HT up to a respectable level.

• TV = Tosh 50HDX82
  Receiver = Pioneer VSX-D810
  STB = SA 3100HD (Rogers)
  DVD = Panny RP62
  VCR = Sony SLV757 (Antique???)
  Cass = Denon DR-M14HX
  Lights = X-10
  Speakers = Paradigm Atom x 5, CC170 ctr, PDR-10 sub
  Remote = Pronto RU890

TomW.

[57]

57's Home Theatre

Thought you might be interested in seeing my home theatre setup. It’s probably a bit different from what you usually see because I have my components beside my chair.

I built the "rack" for the components myself. As you can see (post 52), the components are in the middle, vinyl and turntable underneath, CDs and some VHS on the left side, DVDs and some cassettes on the right side. There is plenty of space around the two "heat generating" pieces – the receiver and the STB. Some lesser-used VHS and cassettes are stored under the TV in my new stand.

The room is in our developed basement and can be made quite dark, even during the day or on summer evenings.

The room is about 16’ x 20’ x 8’ high, with the TV along the 16’ wall. We sit about 11’ from the TV (seats are easily movable, if desired, but usually stay in the same spot). "The boss" sits in the larger La-Z-Boy chair, which is a little amusing, since she is quite a small person.

The equipment consists of: New equipment in Bold

Panasonic TCP65S1 HDTV
Martin Logan Scenario Main Speakers
Martin Logan Cinema Center Speaker
Clements Subwoofer
Polk PSW505 Subwoofer
Yamaha NS690 Speakers used for surrounds
Small center rear speaker
SA8300HD (cloned 320 GB) & eHDD (1TB)
Denon AVR4310Ci Receiver
Oppo BDP-83 BD player
Toshiba SD2109 DVD Player (kept for non-critical, programmable listening)
Kenwood LVD710 Laser Disc Player
JVC S7500U S-VHS VCR (Doesn't get much use)
Yamaha KX670 Cassette Deck
Dual 714Q Turntable
Grado SR-125 Headphones

Photos of my setup below:

To the younger people just starting out, it took us 40 years of saving, purchasing and upgrading to get to this point, so take your time - getting there is a big part of the fun.


Main Photo:





Room lights down, still some light from window (picture taken daytime). Bias lighting on rear of TV via IKEA LEDs - I used 2 of the 4 "LED bars". This provides enough bias light, using only 2 Watts, so I leave them on 24/7 - great as a night light - don't need to usually turn on any other lights in the HT:





Stand purchased from IKEA, "raised portion" for TV, behind center speaker built by me:





Seating area and components:



Seating area:



Components: Component Stand and two pine tables built by me


.
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In our "office" we have a Sony KDL40W3000, with SA8300HD & eHDD (250 GB)

[bolmsted]

Yeah, a guy at work says he has some Martin Logan speakers in the Front and just got some in the Back, and had a centre on order. He said they are a grille based speaker rather than wafer / cone speaker and cost like $5K. Is that true, or maybe you have a little less expensive series. Too rich for my blood at this point. Do they sound a lot different? I guess once I have my own place and a dedicated home theater area.

[57]

The Martin Logans are electrostatic hybrids. Electrostatics are very accurate, but need to be extremely large to produce bass. They therefore went the hybrid route - electrostatic mid and upper frequencies with a conventional driver for the bass. They range in price from roughly $2k/pair to $30k/pair. I paid close to the bottom end for the mains. The cinema center is quite expensive for a center channel, but since I was getting the mains, I couldn't resist, especially since the center channel is the most important speaker of all.

The other reason I bought them is because they are beautiful and my wife liked the look of them - not just another box.

Here's a link to The Martin Logan Website

[NormL]

If I'm not mistaking, the Martin Logans are also required to be plugged in to an AC outlet, so they use up a bit of electricity. I've got a friend who has them (he's got the real expensive ones) and they're excellent speakers.

Nice system 57.

[beerme1]

Originally Posted by sleemo

Anyone know who else sells S-VHS tapes, preferrably Maxell or can anyone recommend a good tape?

bestbuy.com 2 maxell SVHS for $11.99
I don't know how much the tapes are up there, but maybe the new Best Buy stores sell them. If not, and you want to I will order them and send them to you. Pm me if that is what you want.

[57]

Originally Posted by NormL

If I'm not mistaken, the Martin Logans are also required to be plugged in to an AC outlet, so they use up a bit of electricity.

Yes they do. The speakers use 2 Watts each.

[JohnnyG]

Nice system 57!

It’s probably a bit different from what you usually see because I have my components beside my chair. Three video connections (component, S-Video and composite video) run from the receiver to the TV.

Aside from having the components beside the seating position, anybody with a front projector would basically have the same arrangement. My equipment is all in the front of the room, with s-video and component video cables going to the projector on the coffee table.

[Geoff]

If I knew how to post pictures here I would.
My equipment is also beside me with the screen and speakers only at the front of the room.

[57]

Geoff, it's relatively simple. Here are the instructions I got from bolmsted.

If you are using Rogers you can upload to the personal web space that you can activate on Member Services. Once you have the web space activated you can use an FTP client to upload to members.rogers.com. Your web space will be at http://members.rogers.com/your_email_prefix

If you are using Sympatico, you can activate at E-Service and then use an FTP client to upload to www3.sympatico.ca. Your web space will be at http://www3.sympatico.ca/your_email_prefix

A good FTP client for windows is WS-FTP which has a sub panel on the left for your hard drive and another sub panel on the right for the remote computer (the service providers web/ftp server). Just search for FTP on downloads.com / tucows.com and you will find it within 2 minutes.


I actually had to activate a second personal email/web space on my Rogers account in order to upload the pictures because they only allow 10MB per mailbox, but you can have up to 70MB of space in total (but not contiguous) because you can have 7 email addresses. I forget what Sympatico's limits were before.

Any service provider should offer some personal web space, but if they don't you can use something like tripod.com, yahoo.com, etc to upload the pictures and then just link to them with a URL.

Rogers has "fetch" for the Mac available as FTP software and I got a copy of WS-FTP off tucows.com for Windows.

Rogers website is very helpful, providing instructions, software, etc.

Human is adding a "gallery" to this forum though, and you could wait for that, but having a webspace to put stuff is a good thing. Then you can put any file there and simply insert a "link" to that file, be it a picture or whatever.

[Joxer]

My wife gave me crap for doing half measures and then complaining about it ad infinitum, so I went ahead and got a modest set of speakers rather than trying to cobble yet another brand into my setup. I ended up with Polk RTi100 front, CSi30 centre, RTi38 rear, and although the RTi100 does have a small powered subwoofer in the base of each speaker, a PSW250 sub. Maybe not as fancy as some setups out there and everyone has their own opinion on brands etc, but its a step up for me. The RTi100's were down to $800 for a pair (from $1500, saw a few people on the web who had purchased for $1000 USD!) and I got a bit of a break on everything else - $225 for the sub, and the RTi38 for $399 (on sale this week at FS for $450). The RTi38's haven't come in yet, but should be ready today/tomorrow. Basically got them at the regular price of the RTi28's because those weren't currently available.

I wonder if the sub is more redundant than anything at the PSW250 level given the subs in the RTi100's, it might have made more sense to go for the 450 or even 650. Again, I'm not really well versed in audiophile measures and trying to figure out the bass management in my system is tough for me. Polk also has message boards for owners of Pold speakers quite similar to these ones, and I already tried their customer service via email, and got a response within the hour. Turns out the manuals that were shipped with my speakers incorrectly state impedance at 4 ohms, the online manuals correctly said 8, and they assured me the printed ones were in error.

[Geoff]

disconnect your sub, set your reciever to no sub and set your fronts to large.
See if you notice a difference then decide.
Also , placement of the sub is critical.