help with simple home setup

[pauldavies85]

Hi i'm new to this world, well kinda - i love my music and did used to have a very good set-up some time back. Right, I'm setting up from fresh and want a simple balance of decent quality stuff, hopefully with the least components possible.

i have just got an absolute bargain of a tv off a friend, he's a massive hifi geek and decided he neded something even more expensive. Its a 50" nec plasma only about 12 month old, but i need everything else to watch it! (no tuner/speakers etc) I will be using sky HD for tv input, no normal signal where I live anyway!

So what I want to know is how can I get the simplest set up for this including blu-ray and hifi. I'm not interested in surround sound, so i would like to run sound out through an amp to two speakers in living room(do-able?)
Can i realistically use a blu-ray player as my cd player?? Is a PS3 a good consideration for blu-ray, i dont play much but it does seem a tempting combo!

Can i take sound directly from player/PS3 to an amp then to floor speakers?

I dont mind buying more if i need it but i prefer not to have thousands of boxes around!

any info appreciated

[stevoknevo]

Any of the latest AV amps with HDMI input will output sound from a PS3. Although if you ain't bothered about surround sound now or in the future, a stereo amp and bluray player will most likely be the cheaper option. You could then add a dedicated CD player if you find the blurays music reproduction isn't doing it for you.

[sonic_2k_uk]

Welcome to the start of a long and expensive journey most never complete....

If you really want to enjoy your blu-rays you will want 5.1 surround eventually, obviously with a HD tv and possibly HD audio decoding.

In addition to your sources, speakers and power amplifiers you will want a preamp/processor to select which source you want to play from and decode digital audio sources unless you do the DAC at the source end.

What you buy and how much you spend utterly depends on how much of a hifi nerd you are/become. A blu-ray player will never sound as good as a proper CD player for hifi. A CD player, even a top end one, will never sound as good as a comparable and even lower model digital stream - which leads me on to my latest purchase - http://www.linn.co.uk/majik_ds

I would highly recommend spending money on a DS unit rather than a CD player and ripping your CDs to FLAC. The sneaky DS also comes with small built in power amplifiers so is ideal if you just want stereo hifi. It doesnt have an inputs though so wont accept external sources if you want to play anything else through the speakers. You would need an additional preamp/processor and power amplifiers as mentioned.