- RMagnus
- |
- Exalted Legendary Member
Posted by: Vicious Spike
Posted by: TalkingElmo
You should try to get a system with good speakers. A lot of surround systems have small satelite speakers and rely on the subwoofer for the bulk of the sound. Steer clear of that if you can. Try to get something where the individual speakers are all actual speakers instead of small satellite speakers.
I'm assuming you need the speakers and the receiver? If so, I got this Onkyo system at Circuit City for about $500. It's a bit more than the $280 you quoted, but it's a very good system with 7 speakers (6.1 surround, including subwoofer). Onkyo is a very good consumer grade brand (not in the same class as brands like Mark Levinson, Carver, Sunfire, etc., but then again you probably don't want to spend $10,000 on a receiver alone). Anyway, it's worth looking at. If you only want the speakers, you can buy them separately for less money.
How do you like the DLP? Those are nice TVs. :)
LOVE the DLP! Your are the second person to recomend that system so i guess I should take a real good look at it. Thank you for the insight on that. :)
Man, DON'T get the DLP! I had my eye on the Samsung 50" until I took my xbox, component cable and Halo down to a local merchant for some side-by-side comparison. Neither the DLPs nor the LCD projections render dark objects/area very well, and in Halo you miss out on a lot of detail. Chief's gloves, for example, are often a monochrome grey with no detail on the DLP, whereas the should be a very dark navy with some scarring/texture and slightly shiny. Dark indoor areas are pretty bad. Almost worse, you can't turn the brightness up very high or ALL of the colors will wash out; you're stuck then, playing with an unacceptable brightness level. For kicks (and at the behest of the sales guy, a fellow Halo fanatic) I even hooked up to a $20,000 Mitsubishi 82" LCoS set, with similar results. Instead I went with Sony's 40" XBR800, a direct-view ("tube") HDTV. The picture on Halo blew all the other technologies (and me) away. Deepest, richest colors I have ever seen along with a brighter picture, since you can turn it as bright as you like without anything washing out. Sony also makes a 36" tube HDTV (36HS510) with the same picture qualities I just described. (I considered it but found the 40" to have more of a big-screen impact.) Alternatively, my law school buddy purchased a Toshiba 36" direct-view HDTV (he wanted the Sony but it wouldn't fit into his entertainment center, and his wife wouldn't let him have it otherwise!) which, although not quite as good as the Sonys, is head and shoulders above these other technologies. Thing is, I almost went with the 50" DLP, since everyone was raving about it and I guess I too was mesmerized by the big screen combined with the slim design. If you're all about picture quality, though, it can't compete with the Sony direct views. I'm so glad I went down to compare; you should definitely do the same. Just remember to bring a component-quality cable (Microsoft's High Def AV Pack or Monster Cable's 400X) and enable 480P on your Xbox dashboard.
[Edited on 7/4/2004 12:15:35 PM]