Home cinema advice
Discussion
Currently have a Samsung HD telly, Virgin V+ box, and a Panasonic DVD player with built in 5.1 and relevant speakers. Audio out of the V+ to the DVD player over RCA as the DVD player doesn't have a digital in, and DVD to TV is SCART as it doesn't have HDMI. Unfortunatly if I use the DVD player for sound I get a time delay between the picture and the sound that's really annoying. Hence I'm thinking of replacing the DVD player.
If I get a 5.1 amp can I reuse the speakers I've already got, or does the amp need to be mateched to the speakers impedance? (eg this one http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/s...
If so, if I got a 7.1 amp will it happily work with 5.1 speakers until I replace the speakers at a later date?
If I get an amp with either an optical or HDMI in will that solve the time delay?
Is there any truth in the belief a mate of mine has that a PS3 makes a very good quality and cost effective Blueray player?
If I get a 5.1 amp can I reuse the speakers I've already got, or does the amp need to be mateched to the speakers impedance? (eg this one http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/s...
If so, if I got a 7.1 amp will it happily work with 5.1 speakers until I replace the speakers at a later date?
If I get an amp with either an optical or HDMI in will that solve the time delay?
Is there any truth in the belief a mate of mine has that a PS3 makes a very good quality and cost effective Blueray player?
Just to clarify, power amps are what actually provide the power to the speakers, a preamp/processor is what takes a source (in your case DVD and V+ box), processes it, and passes it over to the power amps.
What you are looking at is a pre/power amp combined into 1 unit which sounds fine for what you want.
It has 85W RMS @ 8ohms per channel in 5.1 which will be fine for just abouts any speaker you'll have for it. Generally with upper end hifi equipment power output isnt so much of a concern and you can power most speakers from most amps. e.g. i have 1 speaker with 3 tweeters - bass, mid and treble - each has its own 100w amp powering it. But as you're looking at the lower end stuff i would certainly check the power rating for the speakers and make sure they're not rated to 20w @ 4ohms or something silly.
Yes a 7.1 preamp will work fine in 5.1 mode. Infact it should have a setting for 5.1, and you'll only get 7.1 in special blu-ray films, not DVD's.
It sounds like you want to get a blu-ray player with HDMI (the Sony BDP-S350 is only ~£150 now), go straight into a preamp/power amp unit and then out to your speakers, with HDMI into your TV for picture. That should provide a HD image to your TV via the preamp and audio from the source to your speakers through the same preamp/power amp unit.
Problems i can see with the sony unit you linked to are that it wont take audio over HDMI so you'd want to run a digital coax from the source and it doesnt decode HD audio anyway!
What you are looking at is a pre/power amp combined into 1 unit which sounds fine for what you want.
It has 85W RMS @ 8ohms per channel in 5.1 which will be fine for just abouts any speaker you'll have for it. Generally with upper end hifi equipment power output isnt so much of a concern and you can power most speakers from most amps. e.g. i have 1 speaker with 3 tweeters - bass, mid and treble - each has its own 100w amp powering it. But as you're looking at the lower end stuff i would certainly check the power rating for the speakers and make sure they're not rated to 20w @ 4ohms or something silly.
Yes a 7.1 preamp will work fine in 5.1 mode. Infact it should have a setting for 5.1, and you'll only get 7.1 in special blu-ray films, not DVD's.
It sounds like you want to get a blu-ray player with HDMI (the Sony BDP-S350 is only ~£150 now), go straight into a preamp/power amp unit and then out to your speakers, with HDMI into your TV for picture. That should provide a HD image to your TV via the preamp and audio from the source to your speakers through the same preamp/power amp unit.
Problems i can see with the sony unit you linked to are that it wont take audio over HDMI so you'd want to run a digital coax from the source and it doesnt decode HD audio anyway!
RizzoTheRat said:
Currently have a Samsung HD telly, Virgin V+ box, and a Panasonic DVD player with built in 5.1 and relevant speakers. Audio out of the V+ to the DVD player over RCA as the DVD player doesn't have a digital in, and DVD to TV is SCART as it doesn't have HDMI. Unfortunatly if I use the DVD player for sound I get a time delay between the picture and the sound that's really annoying. Hence I'm thinking of replacing the DVD player.
If I get a 5.1 amp can I reuse the speakers I've already got, or does the amp need to be mateched to the speakers impedance? (eg this one http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/s...
If so, if I got a 7.1 amp will it happily work with 5.1 speakers until I replace the speakers at a later date?
If I get an amp with either an optical or HDMI in will that solve the time delay?
Is there any truth in the belief a mate of mine has that a PS3 makes a very good quality and cost effective Blueray player?
If I get a 5.1 amp can I reuse the speakers I've already got, or does the amp need to be mateched to the speakers impedance? (eg this one http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/s...
If so, if I got a 7.1 amp will it happily work with 5.1 speakers until I replace the speakers at a later date?
If I get an amp with either an optical or HDMI in will that solve the time delay?
Is there any truth in the belief a mate of mine has that a PS3 makes a very good quality and cost effective Blueray player?
Thanks.
Just checked my speakers, they're 6 ohm 60W, presumably this should be a problem?
My previous link seems to be broken, but I hadn't noticed the lack of multichannel audio on that Sony STRDH500. It seems the V+ box does 5.1 over the HDMI so that's a feature I need to keep an eye out for. Having a look a round Richer Sounds website it seems thier sub £200 units don't seem to do this. Are there any dissadvantages to linking it in via the optical instead? What do you mean by "it doesn't decode HD audio anyway"? (sorry, bit of a noob at all this)
Any reccomendations for decent units in the <£200 range?
Just checked my speakers, they're 6 ohm 60W, presumably this should be a problem?
My previous link seems to be broken, but I hadn't noticed the lack of multichannel audio on that Sony STRDH500. It seems the V+ box does 5.1 over the HDMI so that's a feature I need to keep an eye out for. Having a look a round Richer Sounds website it seems thier sub £200 units don't seem to do this. Are there any dissadvantages to linking it in via the optical instead? What do you mean by "it doesn't decode HD audio anyway"? (sorry, bit of a noob at all this)
Any reccomendations for decent units in the <£200 range?
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