Just Made A Purchase (1 Viewer)

[Steve Gazi]

Well, I finally bought a DVD player. I bought the Panasonic RV31. I've only played one movie through it so far. I picked up the old Batman: The Movie. It played fine, except in one part it paused for just a second. It may have just been the movie, but I'm not sure.
Anyways, I'm looking to buy some new main speakers and a receiver. Sears has the Cerwin Vega 712's for $250 a pair. The Sears page says they're 300 watts peak. The CV page just says 300 watts. Is that each, or combined? What is the RMS? I've always heard good things about CV stuff. Anyone have any opinions?
About the receiver, what would be a good budget receiver?

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Congrats, I'm sure you will enjoy it. The pause you saw was the layer change. The length of the pause will vary from movie to movie and also depends on the player. Its odd, after all this time the manufacturers still haven't figured out how to buffer past the layer change.

 

[Cees Alons]

Steve,
Welcome to HT!
The DVD of Batman: The Movie is a double layer disc. What you noticed may have been the layer switch. That's quite normal to take about a second. It depends on the DVD as well as on the player.
Someone else is going to tell you about receivers: I myself am not familiar (enough) with the US market.
Enjoy your new format!
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[Sean Conklin]

Cerwin Vega's are good speaker's in the sense they are famous for handling lot's of power and able to really crank and sound good too, I'm not sure I would call the CV a finesse speaker, but I am only familiar with the older CV's, so the new stuff may very well be nice.
As far as receivers how much are you loooking to spend?
For budget receivers under $500 I would look at:
Kenwood, Onkyo, Harmon Kardon, Pioneer, heck they are all worth looking at.
I will personally recommend looking at the Kenwood VR-510.
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Sean
"I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who said.......I drank what?"

 

[Kevin T]

re: What is RMS?
rms stands for root mean square and is an increment of how much power is output on a continuous basis. for example, a lot of car stereo's will say 40 watts x 4 but if you look at the specs they will say something like 17 watts x 4 rms. basically, it's telling you that while at the peaks (which use up the most power) the stereo is outputing 50 watts per 4 channels but during the non-peak times the stereo is outputting 17 watts of power per 4 channels. this analogy can naturally be applied to home theater as well. if i'm wrong, i'm sure someone will correct me but as far as i remember, this is what rms delineates.
kevin t

 

[Steve Gazi]

I'm not looking for anything really crazy for any part of my system. I DO want something decent, though. I'm looking for pretty good sound, but not sound that's going to cost me an arm and a leg.
I've tried looking for one of those audio sets with all the seperate speakers, but they're all fairly expensive. Are there any cheaper sets like that that sound good? One problem I'd have is the rear speakers. I don't really have any place to run the wires. I MAY be able to get away with running them up the wall, along the ceiling, and behind me.
The weakest part of my setup is my television. It's just your average 27" GE TV with composite inputs. I won't have the money to afford a nice set for a while. That's why I'm working on getting some good sound.
As for receivers, I've seen some in Crutchfield that have like 80x5, or whatever the wattage usually is. They're priced around $200-250. Again, I'm going for good, AFFORDABLE sound.

 

[EugeneR]

I think you may be in trouble Steve.

I only had a 27" GE TV when I got my DVD player. I had a new TV two weeks after that, even though I had no plans (or money) to buy one. DVD just really makes you notice that those GE TV's aren't very good.
As for speakers, a better value than so-so new speakers may be quality used speakers, which you may find a good deal on either here or on fleabay. You might also want to take a look at Ubid.com. They have very good deals sometimes on quality speakers. Just remember to add in the shipping charges when making a bid, their rates are outrageous.

 

[Thomas_Berg]

check out Marantz's line of receivers. (i have an Onkyo 595 that's great, but) i personally love the Marantz brand, and their build quality is excellent. only problem is that they're not as widely distributed as i would like...check your local hifi dealer.
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-Thomas
My HT

 

[Steve Gazi]

Never heard of those. I was looking in Crutchfield and they have a decent Kenwood VR-505 for $199. It has 100x5, along with your basic functions. Any opinions?