My total living room upgrade

Posted: August 3rd, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Home Theater | Tags: , , , , , , | No Comments »

Beginning with the purchase of my 37″ Samsung 1080p TV, I started the snowballing effect of upgrading my sadly outdated analog entertainment set up. My Sony 26″ standard definition TV was starting to show signs of aging and reappearing gaussing (those rainbow colored distortions) in the corners. Best Buy had LCD TVs on sale and I could have gotten the 40″ at 720p for the same price, but opted for the 37″ with higher resolution at 1080p. This, as you will read later, was a wise decision.

Several weeks later, I gave in and purchased an Xbox 360 (the one with HDMI out.) We (the girlfriend and I) had debated between getting a Wii or a 360 for quite some time – but with all the extra entertainment features (live multi-player gaming, Netflix streaming, and videos) of the Xbox, the choice became clear and it was eventually approved by the girlfriend. She has since become quite the gamer chic (playing “kids” games like Harry Potter, Golden Compass, etc) and takes great pride in having more Xbox gamer points than me.

Even with the greater resolution capabilities, the girlfriend was complaining that TV channels looked no different than with our previous standard definition TV and cable box. True enough. One Saturday afternoon we hopped on the bus up to the Comcast store and upgraded my cable from cheapy analog to digital along with the HD cable box (with DVR) from Comcast. After all the connections were made, we fired it up and *presto* – HD channels coming in at 1080i and the complaining ceased immediately. From time to time I can even hear her say that she’s “…so glad we got a new HD TV.”

With all this new equipment and cables running all over the place it was time to upgrade the entertainment center furniture. A quick trip to Ikea solved that. After screwing in the last shelf, I realized that I had never measured the TV’s dimensions and those of the entertainment center. Panic stricken, I ran to the junk drawer and fished out the tape measurer. Lucky for me, the 37″ fit perfectly – with a few inches to spare all around. A 40″ TV *may* have fit (depending on the brand) but I was glad that I had settled on the 37″. The cable box, Xbox 360, and antiquated Pioneer stereo receiver all fit perfectly. The living room was really coming together now.

For months, the living room remained as such – HD TV, HD cable box, Xbox 360, and simple stereo audio. Then, the girlfriend kept coming home from Costco or Best Buy with DVDs and it got me thinking. Why were we purchasing DVDs when the new standard has become Blu-Ray. Why waste money on a dieing format? It was then I decided we needed a Blu-Ray player. While at Costco several weeks later, a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-Ray player was on sale for $149 (display model) and I quickly snapped it up along with a couple Blu-Ray movies (Cast Away and an Italy travel guide.) One more piece of HD equipment to check-off the list and a new hard and fast rule in the house: no more purchasing DVDs (if it can be helped.)

The final piece of the living room entertainment system was a 5.1 surround sound setup. I will admit that TV and video connections and display formats and resolutions I know and understand, being a bit of a computer nerd. But audio formats and standards, I know very little of. I couldn’t tell you the difference between DTS, Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby Pro Logic II, Neo 96, etc – it was enough to make my head swim. And it still does. (Why so many formats?) I have been wanting a 5.1 setup for years and years now – even before my total living room upgrade dream, but have always put it off because it seemed so daunting and confusing. But when my weekly Newegg.com circular email arrived with a Polk Audio 5.1 speaker set for $199, I jumped into the world of HD audio head first.

The speakers arrived and I immediately began staging the front, center, and subwoofer channels with speaker wire. The surround channels required a bit more work. I went up to my local Home Depot and purchased white plastic wiring conduit that has sticky tape on one side. I also purchased two ceiling speaker mounts. After carefully measuring out speaker wire (and leaving a loop of several extra feet) my 5.1 system was mounted and wired but lacked a 5.1 receiver.

This is where my troubles began. Which one to choose? What features did I really need? Should I opt for a 7.1 setup to “future proof” the living room? How would I connect it all? After several months of research and discussion forums and feature comparisons and price shopping, I realized that I did not need anything “fancy.” A simple 5.1 receiver with one optical input would suffice since currently all my devices connected directly to the TV via HDMI with a standard RCA stereo cable back to the receiver. I figured I could replace the current RCA cable with a TOSLINK optical cable to the new receiver and would be done with it. Easy-peasy right? Well, as it turns out, it’s not that easy. Keep reading to find out.

I went back to my local Best Buy and purchased the ultra sleek and clean looking Harmon Kardon AVR-154. Again, lucky for me, it was on clearance for $229. I picked it up and went home excited that the snowball had finally stopped rolling. I ripped open the box, yanked out the old receiver, connected all the speaker wires and the TOSLINK from the TV that I had already staged beforehand. I gently picked up the beauty to insert into the entertainment center only to realize – *it was too tall.* Not even close. About 3/4″ too tall. Width and depth were fine, height however was not. My heart sunk into my chest. I looked over to the girlfriend and said, half seriously, that we needed a new entertainment center. The daggers in her eyes told me that was not an option.

So, sadly, I boxed the Harmon Kardon back up, and reconnected the old stereo receiver. I then fished for the tape measurer again and calculated the absolute dimensions of the slot available to the receiver. The following day, I returned the Harmon Kardon at Best Buy. With tape measurer in hand, I began the process of finding a receiver that had the features I needed but was also good quality and could fit into the entertainment center. Only *one* brand had a receiver that fit those requirements: Yamaha. I grabbed an employee and requested the Yamaha RX-V365BL. He returned shortly only to tell me “we’re out.” It seems my luck had run out.

Several weeks had passed and I decided to go back to Best Buy to see what they had. Finally, it was in stock. Again, I yanked out the old receiver, connected the speaker wires and TOSLINK cable to the new Yamaha, and… perfect fit. I powered on the TV and was immediately underwhelmed. I popped in a Blu-Ray, and again, underwhelmed. I tweaked with receiver settings for a while and got it to sound much better, but, nothing like I had expected. I guess that’s all 5.1 will get you, or so I thought.

Weeks go by living with sub-par “5.1″ sound. Then one day, while at a friend’s house playing Xbox 360, I noticed his 5.1 surround sound system absolutely *rocked.* That’s when I knew something was up with my set up. I got home and looked closely at the receiver display – it has a little diagram of 5 speakers, and only 2 were lit up. Interesting. I checked the TV menu to see if there was option to turn on 5.1 sound for the TOSLINK connection. No such option existed. After a bit of research on Samsung’s website, I found this little piece of info in the FAQ section:

If the source is a digital component such as a DVD player, and you have connected the source and the TV using HDMI, and then connected the TV to your Home Theater using Digital Optical connections, you will hear only two channel sound from the Home Theater. Your TV can not transmit 5.1 channel audio from an HDMI digital source through the Optical connection.

Bingo! I went out and bought enough TOSLINK cables for each device to connect directly to the receiver. After all the connections were made, the difference is astonishing. And finally, I have true 5.1 surround sound.

In summation, if you plan on upgrading your entertainment setup, heed this advice:

1) Take your time and research. You don’t have to do everything all at once. I was able to score some awesome deals because I was patient and waited for the right moment, buying one component at a time every couple weeks or months. I started this “project” in the fall of 2008 and finally finished it in the summer of 2009.

2) Go for higher TV resolution over more screen real-estate (Blu-Ray and video games look much better) and, despite what some people claim, you can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, especially if you’re into sports.

3) Regardless if you are going to upgrade your entertainment center furniture or use your existing furniture, know the dimensions your furniture can support! On a side note, it seems *most* audio receiver manufacturers are building devices that are 8-10″ in height! So plan accordingly. I had to go with a receiver I didn’t really want because none of the others would fit. If I could do it over again, I would have chosen the devices I knew I was eventually going to get, written down their physical dimensions, and then bought an entertainment center around them, instead of the other way around.

4) If you connect all your devices to your TV via HDMI, and your TV has a TOSLINK out, it probably *does not* output 5.1 audio. Double check your TV’s user manual or online FAQ.

** UPDATE **
Apparently, Blu-Ray supports Dolby True-HD and DTS-HD signals and they can only be carried by HDMI cable. So, I have since returned to Best Buy, returned my Yamaha 365 and upgraded to the Yamaha RX-V465 which supports Dolby True-HD and DTS-HD encodings as well as 4 HDMI in (with audio pass-through). I also purchased enough HDMI cables to connect every device directly to the receiver. Well worth the extra money and time spent. The True-HD and DTS-HD encoded Blu-Rays are absolutely stunning.