Newbie says hi, has questions (1 Viewer)

[David Berriman]

Hi everyone. This is my first post on these boards, and soon I will be (hopefully) enjoying Home Theater for the first time.

Let me take a minute to give some background.


I have a 7 year old 32" Toshiba television, and a living room of about 20' x 10'. The couch and the tv sit across from each other on the short side of the room, about 6-8 feet away from each other.

Although some day, perhaps in 2-3 years, I want to buy a flat-screen of some type to hang on the wall, as well as a super-high-quality HT set-up mounted on walls etc... for now, I decided to simply "go cheap, but not too cheap."

After much (relatively, I'm sure) research and consideration, I purchased an all-in-one system (gasp), the Pioneer HTD 540DV. The price was unbeatable.....$279 delivered to the door from "Ebuyer.com". It's a new product and comes with what sounds like many great features, and has what is called a "front stage surround" mode, so that I will not have to drape wires across door openings etc...

I know this (all-in-one, front-stage surround...) is probably blasphemous around here, and I apologize. If I find that the front stage surround is not "all that", I will move the satellite speakers to the rear one way or another. They are compatible with "wireless" technology as well, if desired.

Anyway, the package hasn't arrived yet, but is due any day now, and all I have ever read everywhere is how one must upgrade the wires.

And since I'm a total neophyte with this, I have no idea what, where, or how many upgraded wires to get. I do know that my TV does NOT have the component ins (green blue etc...), so this may play a role in what I should get.

Should I just try the wires out of the box to begin with? Or is it a rock-solid truism that you MUST upgrade? And if so, any suggestions on exactly how I can determine what wires (speaker? component? audio? video?) to get and where?

thank you much.

 

[Mark Tranchant]

The only people persuading you to upgrade your cables are cable retailers.

Sure, you *may* get a slightly better performance from somewhat better engineered cables than the supplied ones, but you have no need to rush out and match the price of your TV in Monster Cable.

Get everything set up as you want it. Maybe learn to make your own cables - soldering isn't that hard, and the component parts are quite cheap.

 

[John S]

I would install as is, then come back and give us your impressions.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Hi David,

Welcome to the Forum, and congratulations on your purchase!
I respectfully submit that you will never know the front stage surround effect is not “all that” until you hear a system with actual rear speakers.

Regarding the cables, what you never hear is that the people most emphatic about them have expensive, high-resolution systems. For most of us, the only reason to upgrade cables is to simply have something more robust and better built, with connections that grip better, etc., than the stuff that comes in the boxes. You can easily achieve those objectives with reasonably priced, entry level upgraded cables.

Speaker cables are another matter. I’ve seen people with modest systems claim that they heard an improvement with upgraded speaker cables. “Upgraded” here is merely changing out the super skinny stuff that comes with a pre-packaged system like yours for larger-gauge (numerically smaller) wire. So unless your system come with speaker cables with proprietary connectors, you might want to consider getting some 16- or 14-gauge speaker wire.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[David Berriman]

Thank you to all who replied.

btw, is there not a way to reply to each separate post individually on the board?

anyway, I expect the system to arrive tomorrow (hopefully). I will go ahead and use the supplied cables to begin with and see how it all works / sounds.

But since I have nothing to compare it to......I haven't ever heard HT surround sound much.....I'll likely think that it sounds just dandy the way it is. And that may be fine, and save me the cost of new cables. But I may always wonder in the back of my mind, should I buy better cables????

anyway, thanks again.

Mark, I see you're a musician. Same here...a pianist by trade. angelsplayground . com

Your website doesn't seem to be operable, unless for some reason I am not able to access it.


Wayne, thanks for the tip on the gauge of speaker wire that may be a reasonable upgrade.

 

[Jack Briggs]

David, your responses are in public in this thread, and each of your posts is up to you — in other words, you may answer any of the previous posts in one of yours. Hope this answers your question.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

David - Welcome to HTF!


Do you have a SVideo jack on the TV? It will look like a funny round connector like your computer keyboard plugs into.

This is the prefered video connection between the DVD player and television.

It will give you about a 20% improvement in picture quality over the single, yellow RCA cable (called Composite).

Be sure to check out the Primer/FAQ from the button at the top of the Basics section. It will give you a good basis on how to setup your system.

 

[JoshGivens]

However, if this is an HD tv, he should have component hookups on the TV, which would be an improvement over S-video.

 

[Tim Jin]

Go to Home Depot and go to their wiring section. You can get bare wires cut at any length for dirt cheap. Go to Radio Shack and get banana plugs. The project should cost you no more than $40, depending what kind of banana plugs you get,