Buying Home Cinema.....

Dotsie~tmp

Im buying a home cinema system soon (dvd, speakers woofer and all that) and need some advice. My current TV is a philips 32inch and would prefer the add on to be the same but not essential i think.

I need recomendations where to buy (including online but irish sites preferably). All suggestions welcome...thx.

dots.

Kali

I presume you are interested in one of these "all-in-one" systems, i.e. a dvd player w/ integrated receiver with 4 satellite speakers, one centre and a sub...

it basically boils down to...
how much are you willing to spend and how much space you have in the tv room.

if theres very little space i'd go with the sony dav??? packages.. decent enough sound and picturewise they're generally very good (although i've only experienced the cheapest of that range).
I think they start about the €600 mark... available pretty much everywhere but prices vary hugely between say peats/power city and richersounds... so shop around.

if you have a bit more space i'd pick up a speaker bundle, an A/V receiver and a seperate dvd player... that way you can easily upgrade or replace any part of the system with ease... and usually (depending on the price) you're going to end up with a much better system than the above "all-in-one" package.

take a look at
http://www.richersounds.ie
http://www.peats.ie
http://www.powercity.ie

should give you a few ideas anyway.

TinCool

I bought myself a Sony DAV-S500 myself a few months back and have to say it kicks ass. The Intro to Saving Private Ryan and the shoot out in Heat have never sounded so amasing. As far as I can recall I spent €700 in Power City for it.

daveg

If you do decide to go for seperates I would advise you to go for a speaker package (such as one of the mission cinema range). Also for AV amps I would highly recommend the Marantz SR range (Also excellent for music) or Denon. This will cost you more than the "all in 1" package but the sound quality will be better.

I recently heard,the following:
Yamaha nsp220 home cinema speaker pack.
A mission pack with a set of main M5's
And the Mordaunt short premier pack.
All tested through a marantz sr5200

The yamaha is cheapest and packs some good punch on the home cinema front, but is useless as regards music ie you think it's good untill you hear what the other two do.Pity as those speakers are tiny.

The mordaunt shorts were amazing with a Good Dvd (the store was using the ball bearing explosion in Swordfish) and made the yamaha sound cheap.
For music ,I listened to Dido and , it was Sweet-well pleasing:)

By just a shade though the mission pack I thought was the best.
It won me over,by sounding better with the music, whilst doing the same job as the mordaunts.
The main speakers were of course floor standing though while only the rears could be described as sattelite.

The mission pack were cheaper than the mordaunts by about £100 stg or so .

I heard all these in Dunmorris multimedia in Belfast, who I came across by accident, and who were kind enough to set them up for me.They are all available in Richer sounds in Dublin, but no listening room:(

I've been using a set of mission 734's for years now and love them to bits for both music and as mains for AV surround.
I also got a marantz sr7200 a few months ago and am well impressed with it
mm