At some point in the last 13 years, I lost it
In the early 1990s, I bought a pretty fancy home stereo. And in the mid 1990s I bought a big screen TeeVee. All this stuff now resides in The Play Room. Upstairs in the living room, I have a plasma TeeVee. Anyway, the receiver on my downstairs stereo blew up. And whenever I replace the offending fuse, it blows up again. I figured it’s toast. So, I went to Best Buy (wherein, I got a ticket) to check out getting a new one. Well, this home entertainment stuff is now absolutely and completely different than when I last bought any thing. I mean, I stared at the offerings with literally dumbfounded amazement and had no idea what I was even looking at. I’m guessing in the next bit, I’ll have to upgrade in addition to buying a new receiver. So, I figured I’d go ahead and get something compatible with potential future upgrades because my downstairs TeeVee (while quite nice) is old.
So, is there any sort of Post 1990s Home Entertainment For Dummies? I mean, what should I get? How much should I expect to shell out? Anything that’s a waste of money? I really am clueless.
Update: Oops. Apparently, I closed comments by mistake.
Ask, and ye shall receive.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
I’ve also found that calling Crutchfield can be very helpful.
They know their stuff.
The one advice I have in dealing with them is to not buy their top #1 advice, but the #2.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Oh, I forgot to mention, Best Buy is evil.
They’ll have you arrested if you pay with $2 bills, they use internal websites with different prices, and they have other policies that piss me off.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
I’ll second Crutchfield. Very, very helpful; great customer service. I bought a Denon receiver from their “Dent and Ding” sale a couple of years ago and I swear I haven’t been able to find the ding yet!
June 28th, 2007 at 2:54 am
I’ll third Crutchfield, which officially ups the number of things Mike and I agree about to three. 🙂
June 28th, 2007 at 11:10 am
I can tell you a little bit about the video end of things.
For normal television watching:
1. figure out where you’re going to get your HD source from, eg) cable, or satellite, or over the air. There’s not much point in getting an HD tv if you’re not going to have an HD source. Some tv’s are ED tv’s, you want one that is HD.
2. figure out what size screen you want, I recommend no smaller than 42 inch, as the 16*9 format of HD seems small on a smaller screen
3. there’s many different types of TV tech’s out there these days:
-normal tube tv’s
-rear projection tv’s
-LCD tv’s
-plasma tv’s
Tube tv’s are what we’ve all been watching the past 50 years. You can get ones that have fairly large (>30 inch) screen sizes, but they’ll be really heavy. I personally don’t recommend one these days.
Rear projection tv’s have a mechanism that projects the image onto a screen. Several types of tv’s fall into the rear projection category, including:
rear projection LCD
DLP
and a few others
Modern rp tv’s are fairly small and light weight. My 42” rp lcd sony weighs about 80lbs. They can be fairly flat, but not as flat as LCD’s or plasmas.
RP good: lower cost for equivalent screen sizes, compared to other technologies, fairly “flat” footprint
RP bad: more complex than other types of tv’s, possibly resulting in more frequent repairs, bulbs may require replacement after a few years of viewing
LCD tv’s (not LCD rear projection) are the prototypical “flat panel”, using technology like an LCD computer monitor.
LCD good: flat and lightweight, comes in smaller sizes for smaller rooms and locations
LCD bad: more expensive that other types of tv’s, some models don’t display dark scenes as well as other tv’s
Plasma tv’s are another “flat” style tv, using plasma something or other for the display.
LCD good: flat, more price competitive than LCD’s
Plasma bad: may or may not last as long as other types of tv’s
My personal recommendation: a sony or panasonic LCD rear projection tv, available for about $1500 for a 46” model. I’ve had a 42” sony for about 2.5 years, and I’ve been really happy with it. Samsung also makes DLP sets at a nice price point.
If you need a “flat” style tv, then go with a panasonic or pioneer plasma.
OneCall:
onecall.com
…has a nice hdtv selection wizard, and good prices to boot:
http://www.onecall.com/HDTVWizard.aspx