Blu-ray / DVD Regions

I'm pretty resistant to sink holes! Hell, the Blu-ray was £80 and it's feeding the Qumi projector which set me back a whole £500 onto a white blackout blind for £70. The speakers have been in stock for years but probably cost about £20 on offer at Maplin. I had first light last night with a screening of Skyfall about 6' wide :)
 
Mike about sums it up, (not sure about hihi though!;) ). I began with a good stereo amp and two speakers, a vast improvement on the TV, but as the surround lot arrived switched to an all in one. Great for dvd's but found the sound for cd's and radio not to my liking.

I now use a good quality tuner/amp with two floorstanders and a centre speaker. This gives a compromise but avoids the need for surround sound speakers as the capabilities of the amp allow for that. ( Can vibrate the the floorboards if required! ) All for about £500.

I agree with Mike too about salesmen, however up in Carlisle we are lucky to have Peter Tyson's who have a dedicated room for tests.
 
RobH1 said:
I agree with Mike too about salesmen, however up in Carlisle we are lucky to have Peter Tyson's who have a dedicted room for tests.
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Hey, Peter Tyson is a good firm! I have ordered stuff from them.

Rob is right, getting the right compromise between music playback and surround is tricky. Like him, I too have better quality speakers instead of the usual tiny ones as the latter don't deliver on music playback, even when supplemented by a subwoofer. My fronts cost £70 on eBay (£200 new, a few years back, RRP £400) and a center to match cost me £150, I think. The biggest investment was the sub, which was £350. Rears are smallish bookcase sized Tannoys that at one time I had at the front. The AV amp cost £350, and has 4 more channels than I use. Considering this is quite a cheap system(!) you can see that is soon mounts up. I didn't go overboard with the speaker cables. I tried that once and it made no difference whatsoever to sound quality.

So I have a mixed system with Monitor Audio front, Tannoy rear, Tannoy sub, but it sounds great to my ears. The amp is Onkyo, but if I bought again I might go for Yamaha. I had a Yamaha but it had too few hdmi inputs. I would also go for one with firmware upgrades, as the amp seems to be the biggest cause of hdcp problems.

As gomezz said, I could improve the front speakers, but that would involve paying at least £400 for a pair, even discounted (plus more for centre) and I can't really justify that.

So, I would pick up a cheap surround system with a separate subwoofer and gradually improve the speakers. Some of the cheap ones have the amp and sub integrated, not good. Even a cheap system will sound loads better than two front speakers, for watching films. You can tuck the cables under the carpet, or tack them to the skirting board.
 
It's very curious but whereas I have high demands of music reproduction TV sound scarcely interests me at all. I guess I spent about £7500 on the music system about 10 years ago ( and apart from some replacement valves, nothing since ) but I'm quite happy with the native sound from my 32" Samsung.
Actually I avoid going to the cinema because the picture's too big and it's too noisy. I think it's just that the stuff I like to watch is better suited to the domestic scale. And free from the smell of popcorn.
 
I'm not about to spend several hundred pounds (more than any of my TVs or, possibly, the projector itself) on sound! If the opinion had been that I could do it for £200 total I might have been persuaded, but I have tinnitus anyway so anything more would be a waste. I shall look out for a music centre with remote control, and route the phono outputs to it.
 
Black Hole said:
I'm not about to spend several hundred pounds (more than any of my TVs or, possibly, the projector itself) on sound! If the opinion had been that I could do it for £200 total I might have been persuaded, but I have tinnitus anyway so anything more would be a waste. I shall look out for a music centre with remote control, and route the phono outputs to it.
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There are headphones too.
 
Black Hole said:
I'm not about to spend several hundred pounds (more than any of my TVs or, possibly, the projector itself) on sound! If the opinion had been that I could do it for £200 total I might have been persuaded, but I have tinnitus anyway so anything more would be a waste. I shall look out for a music centre with remote control, and route the phono outputs to it.
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Whilst we don't watch many DVD's, I couldn't imagine not appreciating the effects outputted through a system of sorts. We use our sound system to enhance listening to the radio and some TV programmes, as many sounds are missing when using just TV speakers.

As for cost, Richer Sounds were recently selling a decent Onkyo amp at £79.95 and a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 speakers at £49.95. Cheap enough and good enough to enhance your listening experience.

For 20 years we played our TV sound through a decent stereo amp and a couple of Mordaunt Shorts ( still use them all in the kitchen!) Now we only use the basic TV sound for news and any programme that doesn't include music.

Re sound, I get the impression that programmes played via i-player sound better than those recorded on the FOX. The jury is out on that one at home at the moment. Anyone else think so?
 
RobH1 said:
As for cost, Richer Sounds were recently selling a decent Onkyo amp at £79.95 and a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 speakers at £49.95. Cheap enough and good enough to enhance your listening experience.
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I would be prepared to go for that, thanks for the tip. I will look into it (I think there is a Richer Sounds in Cardiff).
 
I thought I would have a wander to the shop and see what's what in general. I could do with speakers that are tall and narrow to fit at the edge of a window recess.

Annoyingly I once had a pair of Warfedales gathering dust in the attic.
 
RobH1 said:
Whilst we don't watch many DVD's, I couldn't imagine not appreciating the effects outputted through a system of sorts. We use our sound system to enhance listening to the radio and some TV programmes, as many sounds are missing when using just TV speakers.
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I too can't imagine listening regularly to the TV speakers. We have a tv in the dining room and it sounds so awful compared with the lounge one fed to an amp. As you say, you miss most of the sound when you use the inbuilt speakers.
 
I don't have a TV in my dining room... I do have TV in the den, the lounge, the kitchen, my bedroom, and the guest room. Clearly there are a few more rooms I need to cover!
 
RobH1 said:
Tsk !
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I know, it's unforgivable, but it was a way to let the girls watch their own programs without monopolizing our main TV. We don't have one in the kitchen, but have a small one in the bedroom that we use as a radio alarm clock...oh, never mind.

Black Hole said:
I don't have a TV in my dining room... I do have TV in the den, the lounge, the kitchen, my bedroom, and the guest room. Clearly there are a few more rooms I need to cover!
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Bathroom? Shed? Greenhouse?

Den? DEN? Are you American? Or possibly feline? :disagree:
 
I'm beginning to think I'm on the wrong forum - we have one TV in the sitting room and that's it. Oh, and a freeview card on the Mac in the library.
On the other hand we do have a radio in every room in the house ( and the attic ). Plus 2 PIR activated radios in the garden which are supposed to scare the deer away ( they don't! ).
It's precisely because there is so little worth watching that the HDR is so useful, the worthwhile stuff is always on at the same time or stuffed full of adverts you want to skip.
 
RobH1 said:
Quite!
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We have a load of stuff recorded. Just finished Arne Dahl. One more Montalbano to watch (Lucca Zingaretti, of course.) Then my wife likes the Masterchef type programs, another series starting this week.
 
Well.... I took a wander down Richer Sounds, and stereo separates got quite expensive before they had remote controls. I was offered a Sony AV amp for £100 and a pair of speakers for £60 (I know enthusiasts don't like Sony but I'm sure it would be good enough for me), but they didn't have one in stock so I had to look it up - and it's huge! I don't want to find a home for something like that.

I have copped out and ordered a pair of powered speakers (with remote) I found on eBay for £40 (white to boot), I'll see what they're like before I go any further.
 
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