HD/Blue-ray New home cinema set-up

[admin_exported]

Hi - new joiner here.
I am in the process of setting up my first home cinema system and am frankly a little confused by all the technical chat surrounding HD. I am planning on buying the Panasonic 46" PZ85 and need to obviously team it up with an appropriate blue-ray dvd and home cinema system. In terms of 24fps/HD/etc what should i be looking for in the DVD and home cinema system to make it technically the best system available, ignoring the arguments as to some people being able to see judder and others not? Some recommendations on appropriate kit would be great - on a tight budget so total spend on the DVD and home cinema is going to be around £600-£900.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[FuzzyinLondon]

Hi Delia. Don't worry too much about 24fps and judder. The display you are planning to buy supports it and just about every Blu Ray player can now output 24fps so it shouldn't be an issue and you should get a smooth picture. For your budget, I would recommend keeping an eye out for the Panasonic SC-BT100. It's their Blu Ray 'home cinema solution' that should be launching in May/June. It's a 3.1 system with the option of adding wireless rear speakers. Panasonic have a good track with both Blu Ray and easy to set up home cinema solutions so I'm sure it will be good, come in at your budget and nicely complement your tv. Alternatively, you could go for a separates combination like the Panasonic DMP-BD30, an Onkyo 605 and the Jamo A102 5.1 speaker package which, together, would come in at around £800 if you did a bit of shopping around. They're all very highly rated. Bear in mind the you should set aside some of your for cabling too. Good luck.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks very much for this - really helpful and straight to the point! It sounds like the only thing I should worry about is that the DVD can 'output 24fps'. Presumably the same does not need to be said for the home cinema? Will budget for some cabling too - thanks for the tip. Think just some upgraded speaker wires and a couple of HDMI cables should do the job?

 

[FuzzyinLondon]

Yes that sounds fine. Also maybe an optical cable or two if you're planning on hooking Sky or freeview up to your home cinema set-up. Seriously, you don't need to worry about your DVD player doing 24fps. If you buy a Blu-Ray player it will automatically detect what kind of disc it is playing and play it at the correct speed. The amp will pass the picture signal through without tampering with it. In turn, you PZ85 will automatically detect what kind of signal it is receiving and display the images at the correct speed. It's a lot less complicated than I make it sound, believe me.