Noob here! Need advice from fellow members (1 Viewer)

[titanium]

I just order the Sony KDS-R60XBR2! fyi, I know nothing about HT equipment, speakers, receivers, etc. I now need some help choosing which HT system to buy. I've been currently browsing Bestbuy website and can't seem nor know which system to get. Can you guys recommend what system to get from their site? My budget is under 1 grand. 80% is for movies, 10% music, and the other 10% is games. I'm also currently in the market for a HD DVD player and a Blu Ray player. What are your thought on using the 360 for HDDVD and the PS3 for Blu ray? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

Ty

 

[Nick:G]

First off, do you absolutely have to buy from Best Buy? Unfortunately, that budget will usually only get you into HTiB (home theater in a box) territory. HTiB's should generally be avoided, as they typically include subpar speakers and very limiting receivers. Also, an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player will easily blow a lot of your proposed budget (unless of course, you're budgeting a player separately).

For $1,000, I would look into a decent receiver at about $300-400 tops (entry-level Yamaha and Denon come to mind here) and budget the rest for speakers and cabling. The Athena Micra 6 package (around $500 retail) is excellent in this price range.

Also, keep in mind that you have to purchase a separate hard drive ($200) for the 360 to play HD-DVD software. HD-DVD (360) and Blu-Ray (PS3) playback on both consoles do not appear to have any intention of fully supporting the next-generation surround formats (DTS HD Master and Dolby TrueHD), which might actually matter to you in the long run. When these formats finally have their acts together, you'll start to see dedicated players show up with on-board decoders so you won't have to rely on HDMI 1.3 to get full-bandwidth playback of these formats.