Suitable amp & speaker package for combined home cinema & hi-fi

[admin_exported]

Hi,

It's a long drive from my house to a shop where anyone knows anything much about hi-fi - Currys and Comet have seen to that!

So here are the questions I'd like to ask a shop assistant - if I could find one!

I want to have a combined home cinema & hi-fi in my living room. My constraints are largely wife-related

My budget will only stretch to the kind of stuff that appears in 'What Hi-Fi''s 'budget' recommendations

I want to plug the following into it:

TV / Digital TV HDD box / phono / cassette deck / iPod / some kind of recordable DVD to archive stuff from the HDD box

The wife isn't keen on lots of cables - if I could get something that either has wireless 'behind the head' speakers or doesn't need them at all (is 'virtual home cinema' really any good?).

I'll want it to be able to treat traditional stereo and surround-sound accordingly.

Really, I'm looking for recommendations of speaker / amp packages. Any ideas?

Thanks

PE

 

[TheHomeCinemaCentre]

Hi , welcome to the foum. Do you need surround sound, one way to accomdate good hi-fi and no wires would with a good stereo set up.

If stereo is your main focus but you would like multi channel as well you could consider a good AV amp and just run two speakers at this stage to help with the cost.

A DVD recorder or indeed a bluray recorder would help keep the box count down - do you have a lot of cassettes and do you use them regularly?

 

[Anonymous]

Hmm. Doesn't the amp need to be an input for an 'optical out' line from the TV for the best sound? Also, I'm not sure why, but I've had the impression that I'd need an HDMI connection into the amp as well? I may be completely wrong about this....

Here's the diagram of what I've got in mind. I *think* I'm looking for an amp that will have inputs for 3 x audio (or two audio & one USB), one 'optical out' and one HDMI. I'm not hugely bothered about 'behind the head' speakers but I think that a subwoofer would be a good idea. And I'd like the amp to treat audio inputs like stereo and TV inputs like surround sound.