5.1 or 2.1 ?

mordeith

Hi all.
We recently bought the old man a 32" Widescreen JVC TV for his birthday. He wants to get external speakers for it and I'm wondering whether it would be better to get a 5.1 set or 2.1. The reason I'm asking is that the 5.1 would only work when connected to the DVD player (i think ) and he wouldn't really watch that many movies. However a 2.1 set could be hooked directly to the TV. Would the sound be a lot better than the TVs built in-speakers?
Any thoughts appreciated.

commited

Whats the budget?

GlennaMaddy

I think 2.1 is the way to go for your oul fella, very rarely will you notice sound from the extra three speakers when watching the latest DVD's with 5.1.

Sound from 2.1 is usually better than TV's own speakers, and you can spread them apart for a more noticible stereo effect.

I'm using 2.1 speakers from Creative, great sound for 50 quid, TV's own speakers complement them well

Idleater

mordeith wrote:

Hi all.
We recently bought the old man a 32" Widescreen JVC TV for his birthday. He wants to get external speakers for it and I'm wondering whether it would be better to get a 5.1 set or 2.1. The reason I'm asking is that the 5.1 would only work when connected to the DVD player (i think ) and he wouldn't really watch that many movies. However a 2.1 set could be hooked directly to the TV. Would the sound be a lot better than the TVs built in-speakers?
Any thoughts appreciated.

Going for any speaker system other than the speakers that are attached to the tv are going to require an amplifier if you want to get "more" sound than what you are currently getting from the TV.

What are the reasons that he wants "more" sound? Does he listen to CD's or the radio there too?

L

mordeith

It's more the fact that others in the house are 'encouraging' him to get the speakers. I was looking at the Creative i-Trigue for about €60. I take the point about an external amp as well. If that is required then I don't reckon it's worth the bother.

commited

a creative system or similar has an amp built in so thats not an issue.
2.1 would be the best for that kind of money I suppose.

pH

You can get the audio from the TV:
If it has has audio out (Normally a red and White RCA phono marked audio/stero)
Or you can normally get the audio from a spare SCART socket on the rear of the TV with one of these-



These need to feed an Amp which then drives the speakers, though many products have a box which is in effect an amp in the subwoofer box which then drives an additional pair of speakers.

Even though the TV only has stereo out, the stereo can contain Dolby Pro Logic encoding so that a center speaker and mono rear can be extracted. In effect you get a limited surround sound from plain old TV. The amp needs to have a Dobly Pro Logic decoder in it for this to work.

An alternative (though not a cheap one) is a 2.1 system that produces a virtual surround stage like this Denon

mordeith

pH wrote:

An alternative (though not a cheap one) is a 2.1 system that produces a virtual surround stage like this Denon

Holy Sh*t! That costs nearly as much as the TV:eek: lol

Idleater

mordeith wrote:

Holy Sh*t! That costs nearly as much as the TV:eek: lol

Similar to the Denon is the Yamaha YSP-800 which is designed to coordinate neatly with your Plasma/LCD tv. It doesn't have a sub mind but I would presume that the speakers are just as capable at providing bass. It seems to be a neater box than the Denon and would presumably hide all the wires nicely.

I would recommend this if you were not going down the Amp route.

L.