Please help me build my dream system!!! $8000 budget, new apartment.... wooo (1 Viewer)

[Adam-D]

Hello all!

Well, this weekend I finally bought a new apartment and I am going to be buying all new home theather equipement, as well as a leather couch and 2 recliners. I need help deciding what to get for my home theater. I bought this apartment just because of it's awesome layout for a home theater system. All the other ones I looked at had a fireplace right in the middle of the room and made it impossible to have a decent setup, but this new place has a great setup. Check it out: dejaray.com/living.jpg (it wont let me post it as a hyperlink) - I will be putting the home theater on the right wall and the new couch where the old couch is. Here is what I want my home theater to have:

- Projection HDTV 57" or 65"
- Receiver
- 5 Disc DVD Player
- Multi-Disk CD player (like 300 CDS)
- VCR
- Dual Casettle Deck
- Equalizer

I mainly want all of this stuff for my home entertainment center because:

A. It looks cool having tons of equiptment and tons of remotes

B. I will have TONS of room in my Walmart entertainment center. Check it out at dejaray.com/pic.jpg

C. I can afford to waste money in order to have bragging rights over my friends


As far as what sound I want, obviously surround sound. I only want 5.1, I think that is all I need. I want 2 rear speakers, 2 front speakers, 1 center speaker (which I will put on top of the projection tv) and of course a sub woofer. And last but not least, I want all the stuff to match in color and size (width) so I can stack some of them and they won't look weird.

So can anyone help me figure out what I should do? I've spent the last few days looking at TV's but I am pretty confused. I see Toshiba has lots of different models. All their 57" tvs range in price, but they all look the same to me. I also dont know what receiver to buy. I am looking at the Sony STR-DE595. It has 5x100W and Dolby 5.1. Is this good? I also saw the STR-DE995. It's only a couple hundred dollars more and looks much better, but I am wondering, how does 7.1 sound even work?

I would be much appreciated if you all could help me build the system of my dreams. I put a smaller down payment on my mortgage just so I could afford to build the best damn entertainment center ever. Oh by the way, did I mentioned, I have an XBOX, PS2, GameCube and N64 and I want to hook them all up to the TV. How could I do this? Would it be possible to just have some kind of adapter that let me switch from one console to the other>

Thanks,
Adam

 

[Philip Hamm]

it wont let me post it as a hyperlink

Hint: The little "IMG" button is all you need to post pics.



Nice apartment room!



Nice looking center, that's from Wal*Mart?

Looks like you've got the "Interior" part pretty well smoothed out. Perhaps the answers to your other qustions can be found on the various Hardware forums. Give them a look, there is probably something there for you.

 

[Brian Corr]

Adam,
You can't go wrong with the toshiba tv's in my opinion. If you can't tell the difference between models, go with the 57H83. You can tweak it to give a great pic.
I like Denon receivers the best. I think overall they offer the most features, best sound and least amount of problems for your money. Take a look at the 2803 or 3803. The 3803 does video conversion from s-video to component video which is a very nice feature, especially since you want to hook up all your game systems. You could hook up each component to an unused input on the receiver and the receiver would then do all the switching of inputs for you.
Get a throw rug for those hard wood floors and some stuff to hang on the wall or your gonna have some pretty bad reflections.
good luck.

 

[Cary_H]

Just my initial thoughts from what I see.....and others may or may not concur with me, and I'm OK with that.
1) You will have a bit of a problem setting up your rears with the couch up against the back wall.
2) I'm just guessing at the width of the room, but I would give good thought to screen size. IMO a 57" will be too big. I would even go as far to say PQ on a 50" might leave you flat with anything short of a signal from DVDs or better.
And, I might add that my setup is in an apartment with near identical dimensions. It has drywall on concrete walls, carpet on concrete floors, and a textured concrete ceiling, though. I have a leather loveseat with matching chair and ottoman.
I had quite the time setting things up. My sub position is not quite optimal, I would prefer to have a room width of another 4 or 5 feet than I do.
For what it's worth my system consists of a Toshiba 50H81, Paradigm Ref. 60 fronts, 20 rears, PS1000 sub, Studio CC center, Denon 3802, and a Tosh 4700 DVD player.

 

[David Preston]

I agree with Cary the 50" would be great in that room. When I went to get a new RPTV with my wife she wanted to get the 65". I told her I would love to get it to but we would be sitting to close to it to enjoy it size. We got the 57". I have a entertainment center similar to yours I love it. As for all your game systems go you can put them behind the doors at the bottom and hide them and all the wires until its game time. As soon as I saw the awesome pics of your apartment I was gonna suggest a rug or wall decorations but Brian beat me to it. It will help a lot. As far as receivers go Denon is a excellent choice you should also check out NAD and MArantz. Denon also makes some great DVD players. Let us know how it looks after you are done.

 

[Owen Bartley]

For what its worth, I'll put in another reccommendation for Denon, I have the 2802, but the 2803 even has a few extra features that I almost with I waited for. Its a very solid receiver, IMO, it would crush the Sony ones. Good high current power, tons of tewakability. And I believe it even has amplification for 2 rear surround speakers (my 2802 only has the one) which you can use for a second zone if you decide you don't need 7.1 right away. Oh, the on screen display is cool too.

Edit: you might want to look at some Onkyo receivers too, my brother has one and its great (just not as great as mine )

I don't know what you're thinking for speakers, but I've been happy pairing myine with Paradigms, and I'm still trying to decide if I want to build a pair of towers or go back and get the Monitor 7's like I originally planned. Right now even the Mini Monitors sound great since I have a sub running.

Just my 2 cents!