What receiver and speakers? (1 Viewer)

[Isaiah]

A friend of mine purchased a 57" Hitachi UltraVision 57S715 last year. Now this guy can be kind of....uninformed sometimes. Here's an example: I go over to his house to catch Collateral when it came out on DVD. First off, completely pressed back in our seats I think we're barely 1.5x the screen distance. You might figure that should be 'okay'. But he was using an old PS2 as the DVD player running that through a cheap-*** VCR to the HDTV with RCA's. Yeah lol. The picture was horrible as you can imagine. "You spent $2k for that?" I asked him. So a trip down to Video Only for a Progressive DVD player, component video, and a digital coax was going to cure it. With the DVD player plugged directly into the HDTV the picture is infinitely better, I can be very close and it looks quite good. But of course his receiver is a vintage '97 Aiwa home theater in a box. It sounds like its pushing 10 watts to the surrounds. He does have a pair of fairly new looking Yamaha towers, im not sure what model but they have two woofers (6.5" maybe) and a tweeter.
So using the Yamaha towers as the front L+R, he needs a center, rear L+R, a receiver, and most likely a sub. Now with a budget of around $800, what's the best he can get? If you could throw me two descriptions, one with a sub and one without, that would be great.
Thanks, Isaiah

 

[John S]

he needs so much.. I'd go for a complete Onkyo 770 system.. Way under your budget, and totally respectable performance.

 

[Isaiah]

I've been looking. I know you should have all the same brand/series of speaker, but piece by piece isn't too bad.

Yamaha HTR-5760 $366
Athena AS-C1 Center $143
Athena AS-B1 Bookshelf (pair) $149
Yamaha YST-SW315 10" 250w Sub $202.95 (the Athena 8" sub in this price range seems kind of weak by the stats)

Or is the HTR-5790 worth the extra money that would go toward a sub?

 

[tommy_E]

how u doin isaiah....htr-5790 is worth the extra money....the 5760 is $366? i got my 5790 for $530+shipping..so its $164 more....def worth it

i have the athena AS-C1 and AS-B1 pair..works very nice so i would go with getting the 5790 first... then the athenas whenever u intend too

ciao

 

[Isaiah]

He still doesn't know exactly what he wants to do. He does want the 5790 with its full YPAO and beefier chassis/amp. We listened to the Athena B1s at Best Buy, but their set-up and listening area is a joke. They were on sale for $100/pair. I have noticed at a particular website they have Infinity Beta 40 towers for $475 shipped. They also have the Beta 360 center for $200; yes the one with the dual 6.5" woofers that would match the 40 towers perfectly. Some refurbed Alpha 20s can be had for about $150 on Ebay. There are a lot of options out there you just have to look.

 

[tommy_E]

how u doin....
i dunno...everyones different...but from audioadvisor.com...they say"if you have 180 to spend on bookshelves get the athenas"...so i dunno everyones got different views


the best buy by me {yonkers, ny} had the old yamaha HTR-5140 which sucks...so you have to see whats pushing the speakers and what theyre hooked up to. {also had the thinnest speaker wire hooked up } so you gotta shop around..i personally like the athenas with the yamaha. but as i see Isaiah..you know about how to shop around.

best buy sucks for "listening to their products" if they had a good f:star: ckin receiver hooked up...then yea its worth it