Thread: Home Theater Pad (TV/Audio/Video) IOTI The Look And Sound Of Perfect
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Kreese

Ensuring Transparency
 
That was the HD-DVD slogan. A thread to discuss TVs / Projectors, home theater audio and blu-ray /media players. OP will be updated.



Best of 2021








CES 2022


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I've never had the luxury of even 5.1 surround, but I did do myself a favour just before lockdown and bought myself some standalone speakers. Steljes NS3, which are active speakers. Bluetooth too, for when I want it. I run both my PC (3.5mm) and TV (optical) through it and it's just been such upgrade. Someone in another room thought a car was revving an engine down the road when I watched a film on them, because they have a surprising amount of kick. I won't need a sub for my needs.

That said, I'd love to have a dedicated home theatre room that I could soundproof the walls of. I don't go crazy with volume, but it would be nice to go for that full experience.

@MetalAlien, you've got a HT right?
 
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I've never had the luxury of even 5.1 surround, but I did do myself a favour just before lockdown and bought myself some standalone speakers. Steljes NS3, which are active speakers. Bluetooth too, for when I want it. I run both my PC (3.5mm) and TV (optical) through it and it's just been such upgrade. Someone in another room thought a car was revving an engine down the road when I watched a film on them, because they have a surprising amount of kick. I won't need a sub for my needs.

That said, I'd love to have a dedicated home theatre room that I could soundproof the walls of. I don't go crazy with volume, but it would be nice to go for that full experience.

@MetalAlien, you've got a HT right?
I always have a projector.. Currently using this one which is really nice for it's age... it's still going on it's original bulb.


This is my screen... it pulls down in front of the TV when you want to use it.


I run everything through my PC so my TV and projector are cloned... so the computer sends the same image to both.

I am currently not using a surround because I like older movies and they don't benefit as much. But I've had a Sony 7.1 in the past. I am just using a fender amp at the moment but I do want a sound bar or something. The fender is nice at 1500 watts and it works fine for older movies but every now and then I do watch a modern movie.
 
I remember when I used to chase the best picture. It left me feeling empty/ depleted and ultimately depressed. The blacks will never be black enough. There will never be enough K’s. Ever-increasing Hz will just leave your wallet hurt.
 
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I am looking to actually downsize my HT a bit. I bought masive towers to fill my new house that I was planning on moving but then COVID hit that market and that flew out the window. SO I have these massively overkill speakers taking up so much foot print in my already small house.

Anybody have experience with ELAC?
 
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CES 2022

LG










Panasonic



Samsung





Sony







Hisense




TCL





 
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I remember when I used to chase the best picture. It left me feeling empty/ depleted and ultimately depressed. The blacks will never be black enough. There will never be enough K’s. Ever-increasing Hz will just leave your wallet hurt.
I don't give a shit about any of that...I try to replicate the experience I remember going to the movies as a kid... that is not hard to do... hell a lot of movies had mono sound.. Terminator part 1 for example. My TV and projector are 1080p and i'm just fine with it..
 
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Has anyone soundproofed using those standard 4 quadrant square panels you can get? I’ve never looked into anything like that, but a friend of mine wants to sound proof a room when he moves house.
 
Question to any home theatre gurus out there;

Which is better, connecting devices to the tv and e-arcing sound to the reciever or connect all devices to the reciever and send visuals to the tv?
 
My suffering is over.

I've bought Denon x1700h receiver for my 4k/120 gaming setup. Highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a budget receiver. It supports 4k/120 passthrough with 3 hdmi inputs, has another 3 hdmi inputs for 4k/60. 7.2, dolby atmos, blutooth.

I've tried to pass through the video from PC (rtx 3080) and it works perfectly. Even VRR with g-sync work, despite some people said it could be a problem. Some nice features compared to my old Marantz, for example it supports video passthrough in standby mode (without sound, of course), has four presets with customizable input source, volume, format, eq settings.

80 watts per channel, it's more than enough for mid sized room, 400 watts PSU. Good quality speaker connectors. It's important because some other models I was choosing from has proper connectors for front speakers only, and just cheap spring clips for surrounds.

Question to any home theatre gurus out there;

Which is better, connecting devices to the tv and e-arcing sound to the reciever or connect all devices to the reciever and send visuals to the tv?

I'm probably late but anyway. You should use earc if your receiver doesn't support some features, like VRR or 4k/120. Also, with earc you use tv remote to switch and can setup picture for different sources. With pass through receiver you can not do it because your receiver is just one source for your tv.

From the sound point of view it should be the same becasue tv sends the signal to receiver as it is, without processing, but I've read somewhere earc can be glitchy (out of sync with picture for example), but mine works well.

Using video passthrough on receiver doesn't add to picture lag, so it's not the problem as well.
 
I finally entered the OLED club!

Bought a Panasonic TX-55JZW984 for my gaming/office room. It was on sale for 780 Euro shipping included, which is a great price for a 55" OLED. Picture quality is up there with the best, it's already calibrated pretty much perfectly out of the box. Also has all the gaming features you need and supports all HDR standards. Great package.

Booted it up to see if it's damaged or if anything is wrong with it, but it's all good. Watched a few seconds of some UHDs, it's looking extremely good, love it.

The remote is kinda weird though. Coming from the great LG remote, this huge as long brick doesn't feel that good. I mean the remote itself with the materials feel great and premium, more premium than the plastic LG remote. But the shape of the LG one is vastlly superior and the pointer functionality is very helpful. Not a huge deal because I don't use it much and it's still fine. It has buttons for the important apps, which is a big plus.

panasonic-tx-jzw984_fernbedienung.p1140x855.jpg


Overall very happy with it, will now go back to my UHD collection and watch movies over the next week. Stopped watching anything because the insanely fugly grey-blacks from my LG Nano Cell drove me nuts.
 
TV: 77" LG OLED C2
CONSOLES: Xbox Series X, Playstation 5, Switch OLED
AVR: Yamaha RX-V385
FRONTS: Polk Monitor 10Bs
CENTER: Polk CS-1 Series II
SURROUNDS: Polk R10s
SUBWOOFER: Yamaha YST-SW216

I'm living the dream, you guys. Often feels like I legit have a movie theater in my living room.

Bought all my speakers second hand. Really made the whole ensemble more affordable, especially considering how theyre all older models. Unloke televisions, speaker tech really doesn't change much so it's easy to get bang for your buck this way. I'm set for years tbh
 
TV: 77" LG OLED C2
CONSOLES: Xbox Series X, Playstation 5, Switch OLED
AVR: Yamaha RX-V385
FRONTS: Polk Monitor 10Bs
CENTER: Polk CS-1 Series II
SURROUNDS: Polk R10s
SUBWOOFER: Yamaha YST-SW216

I'm living the dream you guys. Bought all my speakers second hand. Really made the whole ensemble more affordable, especially considering how theyre all older models. Often feels like I legit have a movie theater in my living room

I'm set for years tbh

Damn that's nice. And that 77" C2, very impressive.

I only have some 80bucks stereo speaker for my TV, but don't really care because I use my headphones either way.
 
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Damn that's nice. And that 77" C2, very impressive.

I only have some 80bucks stereo speaker for my TV, but don't really care because I use my headphones either way.

Nothing impressive about it. Anyone can blow money on fancy stuff. It's a great tv though. Really makes movies pop like you wouldn't imagine. I'm putting my 55" budget-tier Samsung in my bedroom once I snag a wall mount. Thats what this television replaced

If the bookshelf speakers you have sound good, you have a better setup than 90% of people man. Most just use TV speakers or soundbars these days

Also yeah, I've seen your headphones posts. Always fun to read. I'm pretty ignorant and just like what sounds best to me. Headphones wise I just got a pair of old Sony MDR-1Rs (cups literally falling apart after years of use) and some Sony WF-1000XM3 buds i bought refurbished. I love em though

Cheers man!! 🍻
 
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TV: 77" LG OLED C2
CONSOLES: Xbox Series X, Playstation 5, Switch OLED
AVR: Yamaha RX-V385
FRONTS: Polk Monitor 10Bs
CENTER: Polk CS-1 Series II
SURROUNDS: Polk R10s
SUBWOOFER: Yamaha YST-SW216

I'm living the dream, you guys. Often feels like I legit have a movie theater in my living room.

Bought all my speakers second hand. Really made the whole ensemble more affordable, especially considering how theyre all older models. Unloke televisions, speaker tech really doesn't change much so it's easy to get bang for your buck this way. I'm set for years tbh

Nice.

I have the 77cx
Pioneer Lx305
Center: infinity reference r263
L/R: Elac Unifi 2.0
Surrounds and Elevation: Polk elite ls15
Sub: Infinity R12

Apple TV 4K
Panasonic ub820
Series X
Ps5
Switch.
 
TV: 77" LG OLED C2
CONSOLES: Xbox Series X, Playstation 5, Switch OLED
AVR: Yamaha RX-V385
FRONTS: Polk Monitor 10Bs
CENTER: Polk CS-1 Series II
SURROUNDS: Polk R10s
SUBWOOFER: Yamaha YST-SW216

I'm living the dream, you guys. Often feels like I legit have a movie theater in my living room.

Bought all my speakers second hand. Really made the whole ensemble more affordable, especially considering how theyre all older models. Unloke televisions, speaker tech really doesn't change much so it's easy to get bang for your buck this way. I'm set for years tbh

Nice.

I have the 77cx
Pioneer Lx305
Center: infinity reference r263
L/R: Elac Unifi 2.0
Surrounds and Elevation: Polk elite ls15
Sub: Infinity R12

Apple TV 4K
Panasonic ub820
Series X
Ps5
Switch.
 
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Nice.

I have the 77cx
Pioneer Lx305
Center: infinity reference r263
L/R: Elac Unifi 2.0
Surrounds and Elevation: Polk elite ls15
Sub: Infinity R12

Apple TV 4K
Panasonic ub820
Series X
Ps5
Switch.

Awesome dude! All those speakers sound well together? Lots of different brands, I know timbre matching can be difficult. I'm not even sure if mine are all matched but I went all Polk and hoped for the best lol
 
Awesome dude! All those speakers sound well together? Lots of different brands, I know timbre matching can be difficult. I'm not even sure if mine are all matched but I went all Polk and hoped for the best lol
I'm a timbre matcher is over rated person. For the most part.

My main thing was I wanted three way in the front for Music and vocal clarity on movies. Three way centers just tend to have less nulls and you got that extra vocal clarity.

I had the Elac uni center and it didn't have the same clarity in music and was kinda confused. It didn't sound bad but certain things just didn't pop the way they did on the bookshelves.

After doing more research I found that this tends to be the case for s lot of recent centers in that while they are created to match the aesthetics of the line the center usually is different design entire sound wise due to the drawbacks of MTM designs.

Long winded way of saying, lot of people have no idea their stuff isn't timbre matched to begin with.

That being said, I found that if you pair good quality speakers with cheap quality you will have a bad time. I used to have some cheaper junk for my heights. And you could tell.

If you have a good room correction like Dirac, I don't think 95 percent of people could tell timbre isnt the exact same if you pair a good quality speaker with other good quality lines. They are more likely to noticed when something sounds low quality.

Maybe that changes when you get into the super expensive stuff?
 
I'm a timbre matcher is over rated person. For the most part.

My main thing was I wanted three way in the front for Music and vocal clarity on movies. Three way centers just tend to have less nulls and you got that extra vocal clarity.

I had the Elac uni center and it didn't have the same clarity in music and was kinda confused. It didn't sound bad but certain things just didn't pop the way they did on the bookshelves.

After doing more research I found that this tends to be the case for s lot of recent centers in that while they are created to match the aesthetics of the line the center usually is different design entire sound wise due to the drawbacks of MTM designs.

Long winded way of saying, lot of people have no idea their stuff isn't timbre matched to begin with.

That being said, I found that if you pair good quality speakers with cheap quality you will have a bad time. I used to have some cheaper junk for my heights. And you could tell.

If you have a good room correction like Dirac, I don't think 95 percent of people could tell timbre isnt the exact same if you pair a good quality speaker with other good quality lines. They are more likely to noticed when something sounds low quality.

Maybe that changes when you get into the super expensive stuff?

You listen to music through your center speaker? I always switch over to a basic 2.1 setting on my AVR, as that's how most music is mixed.

You're 💯 percent right though. All I can tell you is that I don't hear any obvious difference in tone when something moves from left, center, to right across my screen or vice versa. Center channels are primarily for dialogue anyhow. 🤔 but I'm assuming that means my timbre is balanced or close to it

I sorta just piece mealed my setup over time with what I could afford secondhand and it worked. My surrounds were a hand-me-down from an uncle and I used em initially as 2.0 speakers, got the big vintage Polks off ebay and replaced those, grabbed my sub from a pawn shop near my old job, and my center channel off some random dude I met up with at a gas station via LetGo. It was all super affordable that way.

My Yamaha AVR came with Yamaha's proprietary YPAO calibration mic but I went ahead and fiddled with the settings after using that as a base reference until everything sounded how I wanted it to. Same like I did with the various settings on my C2.

I think a lot of people forget that they're the end-target user. You can spend all day messing with settings or chasing the dragon and buying more expensive gear, but the more important thing is watching/playing/listening to your desired content in a way which sounds best to you.

Y'know? You invite friends over and show them your setup and they go "wow that sounds great". No normal human gets in the weeds with this stuff and too many merely pretend to be able to discern any difference

Or I'm just a poor and my gear is trash. 👀
 
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You listen to music through your center speaker? I always switch over to a basic 2.1 setting on my AVR, as that's how most music is mixed.

You're 💯 percent right though. All I can tell you is that I don't hear any obvious difference in tone when something moves from left, center, to right across my screen or vice versa. Center channels are primarily for dialogue anyhow. 🤔 but I'm assuming that means my timbre is balanced or close to it

I sorta just piece mealed my setup over time with what I could afford secondhand and it worked. My surrounds were a hand-me-down from an uncle and I used em initially as 2.0 speakers, got the big vintage Polks off ebay and replaced those, grabbed my sub from a pawn shop near my old job, and my center channel off some random dude I met up with at a gas station via LetGo. It was all super affordable that way.

My Yamaha AVR came with Yamaha's proprietary YPAO calibration mic but I went ahead and fiddled with the settings after using that as a base reference until everything sounded how I wanted it to. Same like I did with the various settings on my C2.

I think a lot of people forget that they're the end-target user. You can spend all day messing with settings or chasing the dragon and buying more expensive gear, but the more important thing is watching/playing/listening to your desired content in a way which sounds best to you.

Y'know? You invite friends over and show them your setup and they go "wow that sounds great". No normal human gets in the weeds with this stuff and too many merely pretend to be able to discern any difference

Or I'm just a poor and my gear is trash. 👀
I am still trying to figure out some of the ins and outs of the new pioneer. I seem to be having issues with Bass management if I use stereo. The UI compared to my old Denon is garbage. I cant find shit lol.

I tend to try and get 2 channel for music, but i I use that for some reason the levels get all outta whack and I gotta crank it to get sound. ELAC UB2's are power hungry but this thing has more than enough power to push em so I am not sure what the issue is. If I use a front stage or DTS X Neural X on music it tends to blend it far better than I thought it would.

I have gotten most of my gear on steep sales/open box. I managed to snag the 305 for only 750 plus tax from an online store that was selling it as open box.

I acutally have two giant Infinite Reference 263s that I fucking love but they are huge bitches that are too big for the room I had them in. I had planned on moving but with the housing market I had to shuffle that around and replace them with something far smaller and more sensible. But I got them back with the R263 when Harmon had those stupid low prices on them. For the money they are by far the best speakers I have ever had value wise.

I have spent a lot of time messing with speakers. Last holiday I bought literally 5-6 different centers and just spend a day fucking with em and tuning em to find one I liked. Thanks amazon for your generous return policy. But the GF at the time was like...these all sound the same. i dont understand what you are doing. :ROFLMAO: So I agree that most people fall into it either sounds good or bad. I can tell the small differences between different sets but I think most people will simply adapt to whatever they are hearing. Unless you are searching for a certain frequency response you can spend forever just fucking around with different speakers.

The biggest change by far has been room correction/treatment. So many people spend all this time trying to find that perfect speaker and spend a ton of money searching when a couple hundred bucks on some decent room treatment can make a huge different.

DIRAC is a game changer though. The hype is real on that room correction.

Whats funny is I spent all this time and money tuning speakers and buying new ones and the thing people comment on most is the bass shakers on the couch. They dont talk about the atmos channels and the depth it adds but they rave about the couch shaking.
 
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I remember when I used to chase the best picture. It left me feeling empty/ depleted and ultimately depressed. The blacks will never be black enough. There will never be enough K’s. Ever-increasing Hz will just leave your wallet hurt.
I still miss 3d, when done right it was killah.

4k is enough for even 100 inches. In fact I believe it is what cinemas use in their big theater screens. After 120 Hz any increase starts to be barely noticeable.

OLED already has the deepest blacks, it has a few issues, and upcoming samsung quantum nanorod tech is said to supersede it.

QNED will probably offer the best possible TV.

BTW, recommend people get 5 year warranties on TVs, by the fifth year there's a good chance they break and you get a brand new model or a full refund depending on where you bought the warranty.
 
So hey guys, I am about to hit the buy button on a Samsung S95B 65 inch for the wife's Christmas present. Any feedback you can give me on it?
 
So hey guys, I am about to hit the buy button on a Samsung S95B 65 inch for the wife's Christmas present. Any feedback you can give me on it?

Fantastic television. Super comparable to the LG C2 which I ended up going with. You can't go wrong with either. I went with the LG though.

 
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