What advice would you give me

rondeco

I am in the middle of doing an attic conversion at the moment and intend to set up some sort of a home cinema system for myself. I intend on having a PS3 or an Xbox360 along with the tv and cinema set up. Here's where I need advice. I dont know whether to get a plasma or lcd tv. All that will be watched on it are dvd's and gaming. No tv for the moment. I'm thinking about 42" in size. What make can you recommend for me in or around 1200 or 1300.

Secondly, shoud I set up an amp and buy speakers for the cinema experience or would a home cinema in a box set up do if I bought one from the pricier end of the market. And finally what sort of discount should I be looking for from a retailer for buying all this sort of gear. Any help is appreciated folks. Thanks.

8T8

LCD if you can coupled with HDMI inputs should cover everything as PS3 provides Blu-ray and a very good DVD upscaler (in latest firmware).

Xbox 360 Elite (HDMI version) not on sale here yet but also does DVD upscaling via HDMI but if were nit picking not quite as good as the PS3 from what I hear though I'm not 100% certain on that.

Regular Xbox 360 has component and VGA as means for getting HD output and can only upscale DVD's via VGA also 1080p support over component is dependent on the TV supporting that otherwise you only get 1080i. VGA would be the way to go if that were the case as VGA is always progressive so the 1080 resolution support is not a problem.

For the TV well most 40" TV's are going to be 720p sets but with 1080i support were they scale the image to the 1366x768 resolution of the panel not the true "Full HD" which is 1920x1080. If you want 1080p support then you might have to push your budget up a bit

As an example you can see this Samsung 40" is a 720p set however this Toshiba 42" is a 1080p set (specifications on Toshiba.com) even though both are same price.

So if you have room within the budget then I would put off the sound system and put that towards getting something like the Toshiba or whatever else in the 1080p range.

am i bovvered

rondeco.. i would consider getting a panasonic ptax100e projector , i got one on adverts.ie for €810 and am very very happy with it.

8T8 you really seem to know your stuff.

I am just starting to set my system up and have read a good bit on boards but want to clarify a few things in my head...

Projector set in wall with a power supply and 1 cable going to an amp...(what is the name of this cable?)

DVD, PC (Wireless Broadband) , Sky ,Cable tv, Wii, ps2, connection for a laptop and want to add a xbox premium + sound system....all connected to the amp.

Is it that simple ? I still need to get the amp , sound system and xbox360

YOU CANNOT GIVE ME TOO MUCH ADVICE

gonna post pics when it is all finished

8T8

Basically yeah plug everything into the amp and cross your fingers : )

The best connections for each item would be;

(YUV/component/YPbBr <- same thing) component inputs for the best picture quality from the Wii, PS2 and Xbox 360.

Sky would be scart for regular SD or HDMI for Sky HD. Cable TV would probably be scart also.

For DVD HDMI would be the best option with an upscaling player as the projector you have can do 720p.

PC/Laptop can use the VGA cable input on the projector although unless the PC is near by that would pose a difficulty.

mossym

am i bovered, you're going to need more than 1 cable going to the amp. Unless you have an amp that upconverts everything to hdmi out, you'll need to run more than that.

no am that i know of will take in vga output from a pc anyway, so you'll need to go directly from pc to amp. if you buy an amp that has hmdmi switching you culd get a DVI-HDMI adapter and connect that to your pc using the dvi output on your graphics card. Unless you have a newer pc with hdmi out?

for sky, you get scart out. your best bet, as the projector you have oesn't have scart inputs is to use svideo form sky box to amp, if your sky box supports it. I haven't seen an amp yet with scart inputs.

so, if you buy an amp with hdmi upconversion you can probably get away with running 1 cable to the projector. Otherwise i'd say you're looking at running more than 1

5h4mr0(k

What advice would you give me

Sound insulation before you put down the floor!!!

am i bovvered

thanks for the advice,

can ye recomend an amp ,sound system, i've been looking at the
Onkyo TX-SR605 ,if someone said to me at the start that i would even consider spending that on a piece of equipment i would have said they were mad :eek: ...maybe someone can come up with a combo system that would be suitable.


oh the pc runs windows me , the laptop vista

mossym

am i bovvered wrote:

thanks for the advice,

can ye recomend an amp ,sound system, i've been looking at the
Onkyo TX-SR605 ,if someone said to me at the start that i would even consider spending that on a piece of equipment i would have said they were mad :eek: ...maybe someone can come up with a combo system that would be suitable.


oh the pc runs windows me , the laptop vista

that'll do nicely, it has analog up conversion which means you'll be good to go with one cable from amp to projector. alos has HDMI V1.3m which is a big plus. 1.3 is the first to support deep color and cable equalization, both nice features to have.

However, you'll still most likely need to run a seperate vga cable from pc to projector.

i have the same projector to you and ran in wall cables, i have hdmi, componetnt and vga going to mine. With those i can cover all video signals i need to.

mossym

oh and seriously, windows me? worst piece of software msoft ever released..time to upgrade that..:) it must be 9 years old!!

am i bovvered

Thanks mossym

mossym wrote:

oh and seriously, windows me? worst piece of software msoft ever released..time to upgrade that..:) it must be 9 years old!!

One step at a time....
i'm just getting used to the amp costing me 540 euro....
as i said at the beginning , i have alot to learn:rolleyes:

xanthor

rondeco wrote:

I intend on having a PS3 or an Xbox360 along with the tv and cinema set up. .

Not every TV can handle Blu-Ray properly.

Blu-ray discs run at 24 FPS but The Bluray player in the PS3 only has two settings - Auto and Off. Without an 'on' setting to force a TV to accept 24 frames per second, or an exact multiple of 24 FPS, flickering/stuttering may result.



Sony *may* add the on setting but AFAIK they've yet to do that. In addition, TVs which accept 24FPS without being 'forced' to do so by a Blu-Ray player are still rather scarce on the ground.




The cheapest tv that i know of that accepts 24FPS is the Samsung LE40M8 series, which is about 1600 + postage from Komplett. It may be a hair cheaper elsewhere online.

However...... you need to make sure it was manufactured after a certain date as earlier firmware versions have had problems with 24FPS

The Toshiba mentioned earlier on may handle 24 frames per second. IIRC, there was some confusion about it's capabilities over on Avforums.com


There reports of the 24FPS issue causing audio problems too, although i'm not sure if it's quite to same extent.

mossym

xanthor wrote:

Not every TV can handle Blu-Ray properly.

Blu-ray discs run at 24 FPS but The Bluray player in the PS3 only has two settings - Auto and Off. Without an 'on' setting to force a TV to accept 24 frames per second, or an exact multiple of 24 FPS, flickering/stuttering may result.

hang on, explain it right. you can't force a tv to accept 24fps, it does or it doesn't. your post makes it sound like having an on option will fix the judder for all tvs...it won't
What happens is the ps3 queries the tv to see if it supports 24fps. if the tv answers yes, the ps3 outputs 24fps. if it says no the ps3 does 3:2 pulldown to output 50/60hz so that the tv can show it. The reason for the on setting is that some tv's that support 24fps don't answer yes when queried so the ps3 still won't send them 24fps.

having the on feature will do nothing for tv's that don't support 24fps. For those the off feature is as good as it gets, as you want the ps3 to convert the refresh rate into something the tv can handle. however, doing the 3:2 pulldown causes judder. this you are right in.

am i bovvered

mossym wrote:

that'll do nicely, it has analog up conversion which means you'll be good to go with one cable from amp to projector. alos has HDMI V1.3m which is a big plus. 1.3 is the first to support deep color and cable equalization, both nice features to have.

However, you'll still most likely need to run a seperate vga cable from pc to projector.

i have the same projector to you and ran in wall cables, i have hdmi, componetnt and vga going to mine. With those i can cover all video signals i need to.

sorry to bother you all again but after looking at finances the amp is too much for this year...is there an alternative to setting up the system

Projector(panasonic ptax100e)

---

sky,cable,pc(windows me:o ),
laptop(vista),wii, the xbox ,surround sound and dvd i need to get.

I was thinking of getting a hdmi switch to run it all through ,could i use the xbox as the dvd player?

I suppose what i need is advice on How to set the system up. What i now need equipment and cable wise. Where to get this.
The more i read the more i realise how little i know.

BTW does this projector play Bluray. ???

If someone can helpout i feel i would be nearly there.

mossym

you're going to need a few switches then, or spend time unplugging and pluging cable.

i have no idea what connection a wii uses, what do you use? component?. does your sky box have svideo out?

also a projector doesn't play bluray, or hddvd or dvd or anythign, the player does that and sends the video to the projector in uncompressed form. so if you have a bluray player connected to your projector it will display it.