Newbie on Home Theatre Setup

[Gnitrops]

Hello there!

I've recently undergone some remodelation at my living room and I think it is finally time to step up and start building a decent home theatre setup. However, I'm in need of some advice/guidance. We're not an audiophile family, but we're not comfortable just going to a random electronics store and buying something random they have sitting there. We'd like to get some fine quality with a bang for the buck, entry level-wise.

That said, we currently have a Sony KDL 46HX850 with the "stock" sound bar. We mostly watch 720/1080p movies and TV series, Netflix and so. I'm considering adquiring a Minix NEO Z64 to work as a "tv pc" and use XBMC. We stream some music from the PC, mostly pop/rock and jazz/bossa nova stuff.

I attached to this post a map of my room with dimensions in cm and a few photos. The remodelation works are not fully over yet, but I'd like to place the couch on the "left" (on the map) wall, and the TV on the "right", besides the door, on that TV stand there. I intentionally left a tube beneath the floor so I can pass cables from the right wall to the left, without having to hide them under mats and stuff

The couch will be the one pictured too, and I'm guesstimating the viewing distance will be around 3 meters. TV could be bigger I know, but I'm happy to stick with this one for now.

Sound-wise, I know I'd like some 5.1 system, but I'm very new to DAC, digital signals, SPDIF, DTS, multi-channel passthrough and all those things. I'm really confused on all those, to be honest. I don't feel like investing in something just to find out I bought it all wrong. For one, looks like the Minix can't do the multi-channel passthrough, so I'm not sure how shall I arrange the connections between the TV/media player/sound-system-to-be. Can someone point me some directions on where can I go to, from here?

Cheers

 

[john1000000boy]

Hi. Welcome to the forum.

You have a great space there.

There are a number of questions to ask yourself.

Whats the budget? How much are you going to spend on the system?

Do you want full size speakers? or perhaps smaller discreet speakers? Stand mounted speakers or floor standers?

The beauty behind going for separates is that you can start off with say a multi channel amp, speakers and say a Blu ray player as a source. Then add say a dac or an Apple TV as and when budget or requirement allows.

Will you be wall mounting your tv?

Great idea putting the pipe in under the floor- keeps things tidy!

I started off with sky hd an amp and speakers with an old DVD player as a source now I am moving onto nas devices (having just bought a synology DS214 play.) This will be a hub for the whole house- when I figure out how to work it??!!

That for me is the great thing about separates. They can grow as your needs and technology advances.

Another idea is to get some sort of Ethernet connection be it a home plug or cat 5 run to behind your unit for now and the future if networking your devices is important to you.

Hope this is a start...