What started you on this hobby? (1 Viewer)

[EricK]

I got started on it when a friend's parents decided to take a chance on buying a laserdisc player back in good ol 1985. Once I saw the difference between that and VHS, I was hooked. By 1990 I had started a small laserdisc collection and began the foundations of home theater.
Ahh the memories of that ol laserdisc player, hooked up to a Pioneer receiver with Dolby Surround(Pro-Logic had not been invented yet... ) 5 old crappy speakers from mom's 1978 stereo, and 3 others that i picked up cheap from Sears....until I caught the Bose bug for a few years...!
Fast foward a few months...
I still vividly remember going to LaserLand in Syosset and wanting the newest Fosgste surround decoder with DPL (brand new and Fosgate's own Logic) My that piece sounded so cool with what it did to Star Wars....
Yet a few more years...and no sooner did Dolby Digital (known as Dolby AC-3) arrive on laser in 1995 and boy was I totally hooked on surround sound and home theater. So much so, it was time to complete a dedicated room to home theater in the basement. We had started it a few years earlier, but never finished. Throw in the 32in 4:3 Toshiba (no 16x9 sets yet!) and Atlantic Tech speakers and I was rolling until the latest Pioneer Reciever proved to be too powerful for the little AT's! (Back to Bose!

The originals from 1990)
Finally, 3 years later, I decided to jump on the DVD wagon and by May of 2001 my Home Theater came full circle. I now had a 56" RPTV Toshiba 16:9 HD, a prog scan DVD player, a high end cd player, 2 laserdisc players, and a Denon 5700 (which replaced my ancient Onkyo 828THX, ED901 Dolby Digital decoder and Millenium 2.4.6. dts decoder). My home theater underwent a slight makeover and voila! I once again had renewed vigor about my hobby.
PS...the best and worst thing about HT is meeting people who share your joy in the hobby....once you see their stuff, many times you decide to update yours! The ol' upgrade bug goes around these parts every few months or so... Now who said I had that bug???
Eric.
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Long Island HTF Local Meets---interested? Email me!!!
If you have AOL or AIM and you see me online...feel free to buzz me!! EDKalet6

 

[William Ward]

I was into widescreen ever since I saw SW:SE back in '97. What got me into Home Theater was seeing The Phantom Menace on opening day in '99. The sounds that still stick to my memory are of Darth Maul spinning his lightsaber in the hanger and having the sound come from all around as the blades circled.
After two years of owning a DVD player and HT(purchased in August 99), I'll finally get the DVD of the movie that got me started in six days.
{although I do have the LD

}
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William
Go Bucs!!
MyDVDs

 

[JonZ]

Back in 1984 my mother and stepfather got a home theater. Back then it was a 36 inch TV,VCR,Laser Disc player and 2 channel stereo/receiver setup(hooked up to 4 floor speakers)They knew someone who owned a video store and got a great deal.
Mom put in a Laser Disc(they were Pan&Scan at the time)said "Come here and listen to this" I was 14 and I dont remember what movie it was-but there was a scene on the beach and a crab was crawling and to HEAR the crab extend its legs and crawl on the beach - I was in awe. After that, I began hooking my TV's to my stereo.My friends loved to come over to watch movies in stereo. Stepdad got the bug and bought a projection TV soon after(the thing was the size of a small car).
I still have that old Pioneer LD player in a box in the closet.A mom & pop store near me rented LD's so one day I broke out the LD player,rented Last Action Hero and the got rehooked.This was in the early 90's when they started remastering LD's,put them in OAR and started putting decent extras on them.I began renting LDs regularly(getting odd looks from the people in the store walking out with these huge silver records under my arm, and was often questioned about the difference between LD and VHS "How much better do they look?" was a question I got quite a few times), then started buying my own.
I had been reading about DVD in home theater mags for awhile so I had been saving a bit for months, but I was unsure.I loved my Laser Discs(I had a really decent collection)and had a "How great can these DVDs be?" attitude."Sure you dont have to change discs, but other than that,whats the big deal-they cant be that much better?" My friend also into home theater got a Sony player the day they came out.He came over, unhooked my LD player and showed me a few DVD's.I had fire coming out of my ass, I flew to the Wiz so fast. I picked up a Sony as well along with Blade Runner,The Road Warrior and Interview W/ The Vampire(I think).
My mother is still useing that Fisher stereo, and the speakers are the best music speakers Ive ever heard.I ve been asking for about 10 years"When are you gonna give your son, those old speakers"

Dammit I want em!
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Visit My Pathetic WebPage
"....With that in mind,I humbly add my own prophecy of
what the dawn of the new millennium shall bring forth-
one thousand more years of the same old crap" Jose Chung
[Edited last by JonZ on October 11, 2001 at 09:09 AM]

 

[Clinton McClure]

Crack is illegal and I needed something expensive to spend my money on.

Seriously though, I wasn't into HT for a long time. My main focus was car audio. Competitions year after year, time on the road away from home going from state to state, and constant upgrades to be bigger and better than the other guy. It finally got so expensive and time-consuming that I decided to step away from it and find a new hobby. Sadly, this was after my passion for car audio competitions cost me my girlfriend who would most likely be my wife now. (To quote Ferris Bueller, Any man with priorities so far outta whack doesn't deserve such a fine automobile.)
Anywho, I was at my local A/V shop (where I bought all my car audio, and now HT, gear) contemplating what to get into next and basically shooting the breeze with the manager. In the building the business used to be in, the manager's office was beside the dedicated theater room. (It's across the store in the new building.) I was leaning in the doorway of the manager's office and kept looking over my shoulder into the theater room where The Lion King was playing on a 50" Hitachi RPTV. I began to ask questions about the RPTVs (since I had a 27" RCA that was dying a slow painful death) and the manager started telling me a little about them.
Next thing I know, I'm in the theater room looking at receivers, high-end VCRs, LD players, and speakers. DVD had just come out and I was asking all sorts of questions about it. Not many titles were available at the time, but he had a copy of Batman and he put it in and let me watch a little of it. I thought it was pretty good...much better than VHS. Then he put in The Eagles: Hell Freezes Over LD, and I decided on the spot that HT would be my new hobby.
Now, several years and many thousands or dollars later, I've still got the HT bug. Unfortunately, HT turned out to be a bit more expensive than car audio, but well worth the price of admission.
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http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollection.asp?alias=mport_drivrCasa del Clint

 

[Tom J. Davis]

I wandered into an A/V store in the mall to purchase my first cd player when I was 14. I noticed the laserdisc version of Top Gun playing on the big screens, I went over to watch it for a minute and the salesman came by and cranked it up for me. I WAS HOOKED! I remember that setup well, Pioneer big screen, Pioneer speakers, Pioneer laserdisc player and receiver. Dolby surround only. Pro-Logic was way to expensive then.
My oh my, how far we have come.

 

[Chuck C]

dvd, boredom, and chicks
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Chuck
http://www.hometheaterinsider.com

 

[GregJ]

I've been involved with hi-fi since I was a kid in the '60s when FM was something new. There was 8-tracks in the '70s and in '75 the big upgrade came along. It was a used Sony intigrated amp followed by a top load cassette deck. Before long it was joined by a Philips turntable and a pair of good 2 way speakers. The Sony amp was replaced with a Sansui receiver and a new front load Technics cassette deck (with floroscan VU meters) was added by decades end. After college came a move to Fla. and money was tight so everything got put on hold along with my other passion, motorcycles.
By the mid '80s video tape was becoming affordable and I purchased a Sony hi-fi stereo VHS deck, glad I didn't pick Beta. So now audio & video had come togather in a big way for me so time for another upgrade. This time it was a Pioneer receiver with VCR inputs, a pair of AR 8a speakers, and a 27" TV (with a remote, yeah baby). Well now came family so I was back on hold for some time.
In the late '90s it was time to jump in again so I bought a Toshiba 2109 DVD player but still used the pioneer and a 27" TV, not the same one. I decided on a Technics 930 surround receiver with DD & DTS and since I had a pair of JBL towers I added some JBL center & surround speakers (ebay finds). I had know run into the greatest barrier known to man, the wife exceptence level. To go whole hog I needed to take over the downstairs family room to make my home theater. Well last year it worked and I got the family room and a 55" Philips RPTV.
So as you can see it's not that I got into home theater but that it has been a life long progession of upgrades that has lead to home theater. The fun of it is that it never has to end because there is always something new to take home theater in new directions. My best guess is that the convergence of true digital (like we now see in a PC) combining with audio/video equipment will be the big break out technology.
Greg