need advice on HDMI-capable HTIB (home theater in a box)

[henktermaat]

Does anyone have any recommendations or good personal experience with a sub-$500 HTIB with HDMI? Looking to get a HT going on the cheap. I am NOT an audiophile

[oldfb]

I have the Sony Bravia HTIB that has the single speaker strip and sub for my bedroom. It sounds nice for @ $250 the best part was not having to run wires all around the room. It simulates surround sound surprisingly well. It replaced a RCA 5.1 cheapy that sounded fair but wasn't HDMI. The beauty of the Sony system is the 4 hdmi inputs plus rca and digital spdif coax audio inputs. It isn't as loud as I would like for a main unit. But honestly I think that has more to do with the crappy sound mixing at source/broadcast because commercials and my xbox 360 and pc come through twice as loud. There are other more expensive units but for simplicity and less clutter this Sony Bravia is hard to beat. It also is priced low enough to get a nice 36" LCD for @ $600. My wife bought the bargain basement LCD for our living room at Best Buy for @ $300 when she picked up the HTIB. The picture looks better than the 2 yr old set I paid $700 for.
The true audiophile will piece together his components rather than buying any "IN A BOX" system. It is totally what your prefrences are so take your favorite dvd n cd with to test before you buy and enjoy.

[nalees]

i bought a refurbished Onkyo HT-S7100 for $430 around christmas, and it is amaaaazing! (Sells for $799.99 new) the main selling point is that it comes with the tx-sr606 receiver, which itself is normally $600+ new.

Shop Onkyo is where i got that from, but it doesn't look like they have any refurb deals going on right now for a HTIB. you might check out amazon.com for the onkyo ht-s5100 or ht-3100 ($250) systems.

i'm not an audiophile either, but i do know that a good receiver is important! a lot of hdmi receivers may only do pass the video through the HDMI, not the audio (HDMI Pass-through vs HDMI repeater), so make sure you check for that. (HDMI repeater is what you want for both audio and video via HDMI) *note both the ht-s5100 and ht-s3100 do not do audio via HDMI*

[henktermaat]

Originally Posted by nalees

i bought a refurbished Onkyo HT-S7100 for $430 around christmas, and it is amaaaazing! (Sells for $799.99 new) the main selling point is that it comes with the tx-sr606 receiver, which itself is normally $600+ new.

Shop Onkyo is where i got that from, but it doesn't look like they have any refurb deals going on right now for a HTIB. you might check out amazon.com for the onkyo ht-s5100 or ht-3100 ($250) systems.

i'm not an audiophile either, but i do know that a good receiver is important! a lot of hdmi receivers may only do pass the video through the HDMI, not the audio (HDMI Pass-through vs HDMI repeater), so make sure you check for that. (HDMI repeater is what you want for both audio and video via HDMI) *note both the ht-s5100 and ht-s3100 do not do audio via HDMI*

Something like this? > Onkyo TX-SR576 - ProductWiki unbiased product reviews

seems like a decent price for a reciever with HDMI autio processing... would need speakers though...

[kludge]

You're not going to get good sound with an HTIB for <$500.

What I would recommend is getting a Receiver (Onkyo, Denon, Sony, Yamaha in that order) for ~$300 with HDMI capabilities and then find speakers that you like. If you already have a VCR and DVD player, then you will be able to upgrade to Blu-Ray whenever you like.

Also there will be precious few HTIB's with Blu-Ray players for <$500, the cheapest one I know of is ~$700-$800, but if you have a PS3, or plan to get one, that will get you covered for Blu-Ray.

If this route is of any interest you, let me know, I might have some speakers that are looking for a home.

[slackerisme]

Use a computer. Get a motherboard with digital audio out and HDMI out (sub $150). Throw on a processor, memory, Blu-Ray player($100) and Vista Home premium and youd have a nice little DVD storage unit as well.

I have one like this I cannot even begin to calculate the cost in replacing kid scratched discs it has saved me.

[henktermaat]

Originally Posted by slackerisme

Use a computer. Get a motherboard with digital audio out and HDMI out (sub $150). Throw on a processor, memory, Blu-Ray player($100) and Vista Home premium and youd have a nice little DVD storage unit as well.

I have one like this I cannot even begin to calculate the cost in replacing kid scratched discs it has saved me.

I've heard that a lot of components don't allow high def thru HDMI to and from un-approved hardware... I read an article about this that pretty much steered me away from using a computer as a blu-ray player. Great idea for TV/DVDs though.

[henktermaat]

Originally Posted by kludge

You're not going to get good sound with an HTIB for <$500.

What I would recommend is getting a Receiver (Onkyo, Denon, Sony, Yamaha in that order) for ~$300 with HDMI capabilities and then find speakers that you like. If you already have a VCR and DVD player, then you will be able to upgrade to Blu-Ray whenever you like.

Also there will be precious few HTIB's with Blu-Ray players for <$500, the cheapest one I know of is ~$700-$800, but if you have a PS3, or plan to get one, that will get you covered for Blu-Ray.

If this route is of any interest you, let me know, I might have some speakers that are looking for a home.

Good stuff- yeah I don't expect to find a Blu-Ry player built into an HTIB, but I am hoping to find a HTIB with 5.1 at least. I have heard good things about the Onkyo receivers and some of them come with speakers.

[kludge]

Originally Posted by henktermaat

Good stuff- yeah I don't expect to find a Blu-Ry player built into an HTIB, but I am hoping to find a HTIB with 5.1 at least. I have heard good things about the Onkyo receivers and some of them come with speakers.

There are some packages from Onkyo, but very little money goes into the speakers, like I'm guessing <$40. And the salemen will steer you to a "package" because there no margin in the electronics, but maybe they'll steer you to a set of Klipsch's and that would be cool!

This receiver is 5.1 at $299: Onkyo TX-SR307 - 5.1-Channel Home Theater Receiver | Model Information | Onkyo USA Home Theater Products with HDMI v1.3 passthrough.

What it's missing at $299 is HD audio decoding (all Blu-Ray players have this built-in right now, AFAIK, but you have to use RCA cables, up to 8 of them, for all the channels, HD audio decoding will eliminate the cabling requirment, probably worth it, IMO).

This one at $399 has it, and you get a 4th HDMI input.

Onkyo TX-SR507 - 5.1-Channel Home Theater Receiver | Model Information | Onkyo USA Home Theater Products

The next step up with HD audio decoding is a 7.2 at $599.

Onkyo TX-SR607 - 7.2-Channel Home Theater Receiver | Model Information | Onkyo USA Home Theater Products

HD Audio on the Blu-Ray discs takes you back to uncompressed CD or better quality audio. (Standard DVD's have compressed audio and video.)


A good read... if a bit cryptic.

The Basics of Home Theater: An HDMI FAQ

v1.4 will be cool (audio return channel, no optical or digital coax cable running back from the TV to the receiver), but I don't know of anything that uses it yet, and if you're not going to upgrade your TV to v1.4 it doesn't matter.