If anyone here is still interested in HD DVD, Amazon is having a cool sale: Buy a Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD player, and get 10 movies for free.

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A3-...dp/B000U62N1S/

Caveat: two of the movies are 300 and Bourne Identity, then you pick 3 out of a list of 23 movies. Then you get a coupon for 5 free discs. So it's not 10 movies of your choosing.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I have an older (i.e., 2002) Onkyo receiver and would like to connect my iPod to it. Will the widely available docks work with my receiver, or do I need to buy an Onkyo-specific one, or will an iPod not connect to older receivers at all?

Most Ipod docks will connect to any stereo cause thye have RCA plugs.

That makes sense. Thanks. Are there any compelling reasons for getting the Onkyo-specific dock (beyond the possibility of using my current Onkyo receiver remote), or will the DLO, Kensington, etc. brands work equally well?

For those considering expensive plasmas or LCD's, I highly recommend getting a HD Projector. The best one out on the market right now for the money is the Panasonic PTAX200U
For $1300 you simply cannot find anything better to buy for home entertainment. Watching football on this thing in HD is awesome. The only thing better than this projector would be a native 1080. You'd probably have to pay close to $3k for a good one. Sometimes I 12 table on this thing. Here are some pics, although they do no justice:




I project this on a regular wall. If you don't have a big empty wall or live in an apartment, then get a good screen for around $250-$500 depending on the size.

Hey all,

Im planning on buying a pair of klipsch tower speakers to start building a surround sound system. What receiver should I buy to pair with these? I guess the end goal is to have a 5.1 setup

fwiw I also have an 37" lcd, ps3, and hd-dvr. So I would need a receiver that has hdmi support.

Oops, forgot to put one that Im looking at. Overkill? Onkyo TX-SR605

After doing a fair amount of research got one and think it's very decent and hardly overkill.

As an aside I got it for $400 plus tax from Circuit City several months ago when they had an online sale with in store pickup at the online price. Not sure if other stores do that sort of thing (e.g., Best Buy) but I like that method of buying for something that could be f'd up out of the box.

~ Rick

A frienf of mine has the Onkyo dock and it sends song info (title, artist) to the receiver, and you can see it on screen. It's butt-ugly white on black text much like the receiver's set-up screens. Maybe newer versions send album art though.

For $400 - the all digital Panasonic SA-XR57s is suposed to be decent

http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-elect...5702#tabsection

Great reciever IMO, and you can probably get it cheaper from Amazon. Only thing is that I would reccommend checking with the audiophiles at AVSForum because some speakers don't pair well with an all digital reciever.

Anyone want to weigh in on the importance of contrast ratio? Is there any kind of limit on the contrast ratio from a standard 720p television signal?

Contrast ratio is very important, particularly if you watch a lot of movies or other things with dark scenes. CR is just the ratio of the brightness of the brightest part of the screen to the darkest part of the screen. Watch out for dynamic v. static/native CR. Dynamic is the ratio of the brightest the TV can ever be to the darkest it can ever be (while on), which is going to be a bigger number than native CR, which is calculated at a single point in time. There's nothing wrong with either measure, but don't compare apples to oranges.

I believe, but am not sure, that there is no limit to CR. I'm sure there's a practical limit in that it's probably impossible to distinguish between 50k:1 and 100k:1.

Cool photos. What size is the projected image?

Around 140". This is optimal for the room I have. The projector sits about 14' back. Projectors aren't what they used to be. The picture quality is right up there with plasmas when viewing HD channels. You can see every drop of sweat on the football players

how important is having a dark room with regards to projectors?

Just thought I'd note that I got rid of the VCR and the cassette deck. I realized that I didn't use either device anymore, so it seemed foolish to keep them.

Also thinking of dumping the PS2 because I have no games that I regularly play on it. Wife sort of wants to get a Wii, but I'd much prefer a PS3 (for its Blu-Ray capability). Also got rid of the mirror and painted the room. The wall behind the TV is now a dark blue.

With the panasonic projector that I posted, not important at all. As long as sunlight is coming in from the side and not directly on to a wall that you are going to project on (though even then it may still be viewable), it's fine. The PTAX200U is the brightest projector for the money at 2000 lumens. You can find something with more lumens but then you won't get the contrast ratio/picture quality that this model offers. I'll try to post a daytime picture.

If you are really planning on getting a projector, get it from costco.com. You'll have 90 days to try it out and can return it without any hassles. Most other places offer a 14 day return policy and a restocking fee. Also, Costco adds 2 years on top of the 1 year manufacturer's warranty.

Update:

Looked at the Apple TV and it may appear on my Christmas wish list but I still hope to do more research.

Meanwhile I moved my old Sony tray type 5 CD player in my living room to the bedroom stereo (my even older one tray CD player broke and I needed one button repeat for my all night nature sound CD ) so for now I'm using the DVD player to play my CDs in the living room (along with using the iNano to play special playlists). From the looks of it I'll probably never get a dedicated CD player again for the main A/V center in the living room, eventually relying on something like the Apple TV above.

Meanwhile the AVS forums has an active thread called Lossless music on hard drive vs. CD which has some discussion of the Logitech/Slim Devices Sqeezebox which seems sort of similar to the Apple TV with more of a focus on music.

Does anyone here have experience with this device (or the more expensive transporter?

~ Rick

I don't have experience with them as I'm still researching good USB DACs, but a good source of info is the audioasylum forums, especially the PC audio forum. They do get good comments though and they are a nice solution.

http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/etv.mpl?forum=pcaudio

Rick - you really should look into ripping your music in a lossless format like FLAC using a bit perfect ripper like EAC and feeding that to your stereo. It sounds silly, but just the access to your entire library and playlists make it worth it, not to mention better sound (won't get into the vinyl debate - that really does rule but.....) Physical cd's belong in the basement or attic.

I have a 50 inch Pioneer Elite and I am telling you this TV is the flat out nuts. I have the one speaker yamaha system which seems to do the job but the audio could be a lot better. I have the Rectangular Logitech remote, it was easy to program through my computer but I have to say that it isn't as good as my Directv remote which I actually use more (could have saved $400 or whatever I spent).

Last year there was really no reasonably priced plasma over 50 inches that was reviewed well. Now there is a 60 inch Elite, I am not sure when I will get it but I almost certainly will. Watching TV has never been so enjoyable, if you are looking for a television I would highly recommend the Pioneer Elite.

Years ago I used the EAC/LAME combo to encode most of my CD collection into VBR MP3s for desktop computer speakers and portable use. Agree EAC is a great ripper.

But now iTunes is my music library player and it doesn't work with FLAC encodes. In the meantime I've used iTunes to convert some of the better CDs to Apple Lossless and these seem great so far (including playing the files off my living room DVD player).

Just did a quick Google investigation and found out you can use the EAC ripper to feed into a freeware Apple Lossless encoder. I'll probably use that approach unless people tell me that going directly from CD using iTunes to Apple Lossless is good enough.

Thanks for the link!

~ Rick

i own one - it's mentioned it in the OP and following detail post. so far i've only used it for listening to rhapsody, and it works pretty well.

my new receiver (i'll probably discuss it sometime in a post) directly supports digital network audio as well, including flac. perhaps at some point i'll get around to exploring it. i already have a 1.2TB network storage device, but i only use it for archival and it's usually off. i have a ton of eac/lame 192KB vbr mp3s on there that i've ripped, but so far i haven't been bothered to care enough about rhapsody's compression. perhaps i will now that i've signifigantly upgraded my audio between the receiver and a new 5.1 speaker setup from svs.

No, that's almost exactly like what this is. They might easily still both be around in 3 years though.

Hey guys,

I've drawn a wealthy, home theater fan for our annual gift exchange. I've been trying to come up with ideas of what I might be able to get him, but am blanking. I was thinking of some sort of HT gadget or useful luxury. My budget is ~$100, but the gift can be a combination of smaller ones. He already has a universal remote. Anything else?

Thanks