Ideas for my HT - Your comments? (1 Viewer)

[Brent Card]

Hi all, first post, but I have been doing quite a bit of reading the past few weeks. Thanks in advance for reading and any input you can give me would be fantastic.

First, this winter I am finishing the basement and about half is going to be a nearly-dedicated home theatre. I suppose it is best to say that the main uses for the room will be watching DVD's and big sporting events. In addition, I am considering an HTPC (more on this below), for occasional PC games and internet, and there will be an XBox involved as well. Room size is 27x13, seating will be in two rows at about 14 feet and 20 feet respectively. I am very interested in the Panasonic L300 and whatever screen I figure out is best from continued reading in the coming months. I am looking at a screen size in the 90"-110" range and am confident that this will work well with my seating distances.

Having already done my homework on the projector side of things, it is now time to look into my options for sound and video. I am really wrestling with the idea of powering this beast with a HTPC. I have done a bit of reading on the subject and I think it would be cool to have the flexibility of ALL my music stored in one place, but how useful is it when compared to the traditional receiver/DVD player setup? Playing PC games and surfing the net on a 110" screen would be pretty cool as well, although it is a secondary purpose for the HT.

I would be curious if someone could throw out the general cost and quality differences between HTPC and the traditional setup. On the same side of things, I have NO clue where to start with speakers, as all I have now is a junky RCA bundle that will be staying upstairs obviously. I don't mind buying used, and I would love to keep a 5 or 6 speaker setup under $1000.

So that is my ramble. Ideas or comments on any of the above would be muchly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[chris_everett]

Sounds like a nice room.
As for speakers, if at all possible see if you can actually demo a few different models in your HT. What they sound like in a showroom has little bearing on real world performance. After you hear a couple at home, you may start to get an idea of how others will translate to your HT as well. The only specifics that I would give are to avoid the smallest of the satellite models (I would want at least a 5" woofer in each surround, prefer a 6.5") and get a decent sub.

I've been debating going with an HTPC as well. Right now I'm leaning toward not using one because the software still seems to primitive. (close, but not there yet) Now, I work with computers all day, and the last thing I want to do when I get home is to fix a PC so I can watch a movie, (and something seems to break every time I put a DVD in a computer) but if your willing to do some tweaking it may be the best bet.