It has been a long while since I have updated my blog here. With the birth of my second daughter, and my new foray into a salt water reef tank I guess I just lost track of free time and neglected my blog. Today I was going through my RSS feeds and found an article from Steve Guttenberg on Cnet so I figured this would be as good of time as any to start posting again on my blog.
Steve’s article, Sound vs Picture: What’s a better investment? hits on a pretty good topic and one that I feel very strongly about. Over the years I’ve been known as the “HDTV Nerd” or “home theater nerd” you name it, if it has to do with hdtv, home theater, or anything along those lines I delve into it. Reading Steve’s article it goes talks about the original early adopters spending $10,000.00 on their first plasma tv, and probably have upgraded several times since then. When it comes to HDTV’s I am a late bloomer, I didn’t buy my first HDTV until 2005, and even then hdtv’s were still relatively new and still slightly on the expensive side.
Along with my first HDTV purchase I upgraded my surround sound system, new speakers and new AV Receiver/Amplifier. When I purchased my first HDTV it was $2400.00, a 42” Sony Vega rear projection LCD tv. Even in 2005 that tv was still a little expensive for me. At the same time I purchased the tv I splurged quite a bit and picked up a new 7.1 AV receiver a Yamaha RX-V1700, and Klipch Reference Series RF-35 Floor Standing tower speakers, RC-35 Center Channel, RS-35 surround sound (two pair, one for side surrounds and one for rear surrounds to get 7 channels). Between the AV receiver/amplifier and the new speakers I nearly spent triple what I did on the tv alone.
Coming from an audio background in car audio, as that was my passion before getting into home theater and surround sound setups, I have always been a fan of good sounding audio as well as good, deep, clean bass. I knew that I wanted a good solid foundation to build my home theater on, so the money I spent on my surround sound setup I knew was going to last me years to come as well as give me the enjoyment as well as an enveloping experience only a good speaker setup can give you.
I now however, find myself in a predicament, I have an older AV receiver, that I spent a pretty penny on 4 years ago, that is no longer up with the current times. My AV receiver doesn’t support HDMI switching, doesn’t support HDMI inputs at all, so I can not get a blu ray player and use my current AV receiver and input lossless audio via hdmi into my receiver and experience the next gen audio formats (Dolby Digital True HD and DTS Master Audio).
Now going back to audio vs. video, I currently have a Panny PT AE900-U 720p projector. After I completed my basement home theater build I sold my Sony HDTV and put the funds towards the projector and screen. I went from a 42” rear projection HDTV to a 106” front projection setup. I was more frugal when it came to my video, I didn’t want to spend the money for 1080p as it was still several thousands of dollars to get 1080p and even more money to get a 1080p projector and at the time all I was watching was over the air hd, and upscaled dvd’s with my HTPC setup. I figured I would rather get “ok” to “good looking” video quality in the HD world and get the wow factor from the shear size of the screen than get a smaller screen and 1080p.
So between video and audio, I still would rather have the audio first and foremost and then video second. Granted video is the whole reason I am down in my home theater in the first place, but I enjoy the video more when I have a good sounding surround sound setup to accompany the video, and know that it’ll be that way for years to come.