True All-in-One - is it possible to have a system that handles both sound and vision well?

[pbgb1954]

Where better than this forum to ask what may be a stupid question? What I have currently is;

Sound - a 20+ year old hi-fi separates system largely Denon - not earth-shaking but adequate for my needs CD,Radio, iPhone via Aux. Also have Pure DMX-60 in kitchen used for CD but mainly radio (especially timed recording to SD)

Vision - Sony 1080i TV ready for replacement, Denon DVD player, Sagem Freeview (SD) PVR with 320GB HDD and USB output, WDTV Live Media Streamer.

Network - wired in main rooms and wireless (N) throughout

I'm wanting to consolidate, update and build something that covers most if not all needs.

So far - based on what I know - I think an all-in-one audio device (Arcam Solo Neo or similar), some kind of AV amp, blu-ray player, new TV (Freeview HD as satellite out of the question & Murdoch gets not one penny of mine). Also the capability to stream multi room is there with the network so I need to take advantage of that and will add a NAS device into the mix.

My questions are - am I missing some kind of neat convergence device I don't know of, where should the net capability sit (e.g. new Sony Blu-ray BDPS570 seems to hit the networking buttons), can I 'make do' with just 2 audio channels or would multi-channel be better, what about streaming?

The final challenge is that I won't be looking at the eye-wateringly expensive kit - when Sony can turn out the S370 Blu-ray at the price it does I can see little reason spend more unless it gets me e.g. wifi or ethernet capability.

Sorry - this is rambling but I'm frustrated that I know a lot about bits of this topic but not the whole.

 

[Frank Harvey]

If you want to eek the most from both audio and video, I'd say, no. There will be many people out there who are very happy with their 'jack of all trades' systems, but I think it will mostly boil down to expectations.