Hi everyone, I know it's a bit cheeky asking for advice in my first post -- but it's better than my giving bad advice to someone else I guess!
I've just moved house and treated myself to a Bravia 40W4000 TV and I'm really happy with it, the picture quality is stunning -- even when playing DVDs through my old Toshiba DVD player -- but I feel I need to upgrade to Blu-Ray (though my 400-ish DVDs may disagree with me there!).
Based on the What HiFi awards, it seems like the Panasonic DMP-BD35 would be a sensible first dabble with Blu ray (particularly given that it's only £184 on Amazon), but this leaves me in a quandry when it comes to sorting out a surround sound package.
I've been out of the loop with home cinema for a while now: my soon-to-be old setup is a Toshiba DVD player (that won a couple of What Hi Fi awards a few years ago!) and Sony's HT-BE1 amp/micro-speaker set. I've been incredibly happy with the HT-BE1, but it's in a bit of a sorry state after about five years, and one of the speaker cables got cut during the move, so I've been thinking of replacing it with the latest version (the HT-IS100, £409 on Amazon).
The question I want to ask is: am I being silly effectively trying to replicate my old setup? Am I missing a trick not looking for an all-in-one player/5.1 package? Could I even get one for the £600 it'd cost me for the Panasonic Blu ray player and HT-IS100? Does it just make more sense to get the HTP-BD31S, keeping it all Sony (£566 on Amazon) or is this Blu ray player vastly inferior to the Panasonic?
I realise that's slightly more than one question ... sorry about that!
Thanks in advance for any help! I've scoured the pages of What Hi Fi and various system reviews across the net, but it seems that unless I want to spend over £1,000 (which I don't) there's not much home-cinema advice on offer!
Thanks again, J
I've just moved house and treated myself to a Bravia 40W4000 TV and I'm really happy with it, the picture quality is stunning -- even when playing DVDs through my old Toshiba DVD player -- but I feel I need to upgrade to Blu-Ray (though my 400-ish DVDs may disagree with me there!).
Based on the What HiFi awards, it seems like the Panasonic DMP-BD35 would be a sensible first dabble with Blu ray (particularly given that it's only £184 on Amazon), but this leaves me in a quandry when it comes to sorting out a surround sound package.
I've been out of the loop with home cinema for a while now: my soon-to-be old setup is a Toshiba DVD player (that won a couple of What Hi Fi awards a few years ago!) and Sony's HT-BE1 amp/micro-speaker set. I've been incredibly happy with the HT-BE1, but it's in a bit of a sorry state after about five years, and one of the speaker cables got cut during the move, so I've been thinking of replacing it with the latest version (the HT-IS100, £409 on Amazon).
The question I want to ask is: am I being silly effectively trying to replicate my old setup? Am I missing a trick not looking for an all-in-one player/5.1 package? Could I even get one for the £600 it'd cost me for the Panasonic Blu ray player and HT-IS100? Does it just make more sense to get the HTP-BD31S, keeping it all Sony (£566 on Amazon) or is this Blu ray player vastly inferior to the Panasonic?
I realise that's slightly more than one question ... sorry about that!
Thanks in advance for any help! I've scoured the pages of What Hi Fi and various system reviews across the net, but it seems that unless I want to spend over £1,000 (which I don't) there's not much home-cinema advice on offer!
Thanks again, J