Losing my virginity in high definition.

[admin_exported]

After some months of delicate negotiations SWMBO has given me the go ahead to move to high definition, mainly prompted by our old DVD player finally giving up the ghost (when I couldn't watch Phoenix Nights it was "just something you'll have to put up with". When she couldn't watch her Hitchcock box set, it was quite a different matter!)

Basically, I'm building the entire system from scratch and I'm completely new to all this. However, after scouring the latest edition of the magazine, and a few websites I've settled on the following for a 4m x 6m living room:

Philips 42PFL7603D 42in LCD
TV

Sony
DVP-NS708H (multiregion - we have a lot of region 1 DVDs in the collection)

PS3

Onkyo TX-SR606

KEF KHT1005

Sky+ HD

Can anybody foresee any problems with that set up? Or make a good suggestions for improving it (I'm keen to go for an LCD screen as it'll be used for gaming as well and I don't want to risk and image burn).

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

 

[Andrew Everard]

No great probs there - ideally I'd go for a better DVD player and some better speakers, but I wouldn't limit yourself to only looking at LCDs. The issues you mention really are a thing of the past, and there are some great affordable plasmas out there.

 

[fr0g]

The PS3 will almost certainly render that DVD player redundant. It has pretty decent upscaling of its own for DVDs and the DVD player you quote is £70.

So with the PS3 you will have a decent bluùray player and a better-than-budget DVD player. So why also buy a budget DVD player?

Ah.. edit... multiregion.. I understand... ignore me... although think about the cambridge DVD99... I just got one for the living room, and its nice... a little more expensive, but good sound, good picture, and multiregion oout of the box... and will play DivX from an external USB drive. (As well as SACD, DVD-Audio)

 

[Anonymous]

And I thought this post was going to be about something very inapropirate, involving an HD camcorder.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies. I thought the title might grab some attention

The DVD player is only there so I don't have to replace the region 1 DVDs I have. I plan to use the PS3 as the primary disk player but as I understand it the PS3 is region locked and likely to stay that way as it updates its own firmware?

What would be a good alternative set of speakers? They need to be pretty compact and stylish, and it's not a huge room.

 

[Andy Clough]

Horbury:
What would be a good alternative set of speakers? They need to be pretty compact and stylish, and it's not a huge room.

You could try the bigger KEF KHT3005SE set-up (our 2007 Product of the Year), or alternatively B&W's MT-30 package which is one of our Best Buys and looks (as well as sounds) the part.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Andy. I was thinking about the KEF KHT3005SE, but wasn't convinced there'd be £700 benefit to my ears. I'll chat to my local dealer about that and get a demo, I think. My budgets fairly loose, but I don;t want to spend money and not benefit from the spend!

One question about the Onkyo: if it only upscales to 1080i, do I need to worry about it downscaling a 1080p input to 1080i? (I hope that's not too stupid a question).

 

[Andrew Everard]

No - it'll pass through inputs of higher resolution.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Andrew Everard:
No great probs there - ideally I'd go for a better DVD player and some better speakers, but I wouldn't limit yourself to only looking at LCDs. The issues you mention really are a thing of the past, and there are some great affordable plasmas out there.

I have that Sony dvd player for my 20 inch Bravia in the Dining room. It's surprisingly good and small (keyboard size). I would say that it would be fine for your system if it's just to watch multi region dvds. However, I got mine for £49.99 delivered and they seem to have gone up in price since. Considering that Denon 1740s are going for under £100, I would pay the extra and get one of those.