AV equipment

[SteveCarter200]

I'm thinking of getting a new DVD player and AV receiver and after a bit of research Ive near on decided on a Yamaha RX-V440RDS amp and a Sony DVP-NS705 DVD player.

Its fairly cheap stuff at £220 for the amp and about £200 for the DVD but seems to get some decent reviews. Anyone with a bit of knowledge about this have any opinions or suggestions of alternatives?

Ta.:)

[Clong]

Steve, i have the Yamaha amp. I far as i can tell it is a cracking amp, pretty much packed with all the features that i wanted. Dolby pro logic 2, Dolby digital, DTS 6.1 ES, a stack load of inputs (including optical) it was rated in all the reviews that i had read so i bought it on based on those. I haven't compared it to any other amp, so i couldn't say if it is better than any other, but i not what you would call an AV buff. I bought it because it got good reviews and the features it had meant that it wouldn't go out of date the minute i unpacked it. I payed about £200 for it last year, form Richer sounds.

Not sure about the DVD player, i use the PS2. I will get a DVD recorder once thay are a bit more sensible in price, then i can do away with the video.

P.S. It fookin loud

P.P.S It very fookin loud.

P.P.P.S Did i mention how loud it was? The neighbours have complained on one occasion and i live in a detached house.

[amcluesent]

Have you seen the Kiss DP-500 DVD players (£190 from amazon.co.uk) -

DVD, MPEG-4 and DivX playback
CD/MP3 Playback
CD-RW and DVD-RW
Photo Album
Progressive Scan
Ethernet 10/100

Handy to play divx films that you may have downloaded from P2P networks, and with the Ethernet link it can play MP3 streamed off your PC

[Dai D]

Got a cheepo Phillips surround sound system off a mate who was moving away. Little plasticy speakers, you know the type.
To my supprise it sounds excellent! It used with a good DVD/Video player though so that must help (both carefully chosen after reading lots of reveiws). But it makes you wonder how much better the more expensive systems are.
i wonder if they are like bottles of wine, theres not much difference in one costing £5 and one at say £7 - £8. You'd have to spend over £10 to get a great improvement.

[The Gill]

I'm looking at buying my bro a DVD player and have seen some cheapy cinema sound kits (DVD + Speakers) in Dixons for £99 - It's Dolby 5.1 etc etc - the only thing I can see that suffers for the price is the rating of the built in amp - it's 150w RMS compared to about 400W RMS for more expensive makes.

Now assuming my bro wont be listening to the thing at earplug levels will this be ok ? or should I just buy a seperate DVD player.

It would only be used very very occasionally.

Opinions would be appreciated.

[Cookie]

For the others after a good deal, I bought a Denon AVR 1603 for £130 brand new from hughes and is ****ing brilliant.

Also bought some Sony Pascal speakers brand new from a etailer for £160.

It makes a great combo.

If i did'nt have a dvd player i would buy a modded Xbox for about £200, that will give you dvd and about 80gb of storage(films or games)

C.

[Papa Lazarou]

Originally posted by The Gill
the only thing I can see that suffers for the price is the rating of the built in amp - it's 150w RMS compared to about 400W RMS for more expensive makes.

Now assuming my bro wont be listening to the thing at earplug levels will this be ok ? or should I just buy a seperate DVD player.


A genuine 150w RMS is a lot. I've got an Arcam amp which is rated at just 40w per channel. In a smallish room, it plays louder than I could ever want!!

Also important in determining how loud it plays is the sensitivity of the speakers.

For occassional use an all in one system should be OK, a big step up from just using the TV speakers, and are a neat solution. But the sound won't ever be as good quality as using seperates.

[Will Taylor]

If you are up for spending 200 on a DVD player, I'd recommend you fork out an extra 30 quid and get a Panasonic DVD recorder. They are about £230 in Currys, and have some neat tricks, like being able to record on a DVD and play from it at the same time.

[AshT_200]

I have Panasonic DVD RA71 (£100 from techtronics) playing through Videologic Digitheatre DTS.

IMHO Sounds amazing :)

[Dave_S]

Pfft you'll be wanting to spend ££££ and get some decent kit ;)

I've got a Marantz SR6200 and I love it. I could thoroughly recommend it's newer replacement the SR6300/6400 at around £450. The DVD player, easy, get a Toshiba SD330 for £79.99. It's a brilliant little player, has had loads of good reviews and is progressive scan!!!

Dave

[andyf]

Originally posted by Dave_S
Pfft you'll be wanting to spend ££££ and get some decent kit ;)


Yes but we are talking about Steve Carter :)

[Sideways14a]

I just managed to obtain a yamaha rxv440rds a couple of weeks ago and i am very impressed with the output from it. The speakers that came bundled with it are yamaha badged and are ok for my small sitting room although the amp would run way better with a set of missions that i have my eye on. You have 2 optical inputs (dvd in one and ps2 in the other,GTA3 is mighty impressive in surround) and one coax as well as a mountain of other connectors. Only problem is that the 440rds doesnt switch SVHS, but i can live with that.
Overall very impressed and for around 200 odd quid its a very good buy. Try watching the fast and Furious in DTS mode, sounds great.

:)

[mr-mac]

Contrary to popular opinion - Don't spend the extra £40 on a DVD recorder as the play-back circuitery will be pretty cheap and quality of picture and digital out (for your amp) really will be a let down (even more so if you have or plan to have somthing of say 28" upwards widescreen for display at a future point). Also forget about the Kiss DVD player good for kids bedroom (if it was cheaper) but I don't think it would be a quality addition to a living room set up with the Yamaha amp.

The Yamaha amps are very very good in the cheaper AV arena and you probablly won't find a better amp at the price. Again the Sony DVD player will be one of the better ones available at the price.

Give me a day or two to read through some of the reviews and group tests I have, check some of the discount places that I have used before and check out some prices - pioneer may be a better option for the DVD player.

Pioneer have just launched a new budget dvd player that has all the bells and whistles including new SACD (Super Audio CD) and DVD-A (dvd Audio) ability - the two new formats trying to replace cd and both will give superb quality play back. SACD is good as a number of CD's are being sold dual layer now (eg all the rolling stones back catalouge that has just been re-issued) they will play fine in a normal CD player but will also give noticeably better quality in an SACD player (CD = 16bit and 40ish KHz sampling rate SACD = equivilent of 24bit at 192khz sampling rate).

Will get back to you soon with a recommendation on the best available for the money you want to spend and the cheapest I can find the two you have mentioned.

I was also wondering what speakers you intend yo use with the system as this may help point to what amp you should look at (if say you use AE speakers with metal cones you want a mellower surround amp)

Cheers

John

[mr-mac]

I had a quick word with one of my mates re. equipment and he thought similar to me.

Pioneer DVD 565A 199.95 (from www.avland.co.uk) ( I Think that includes a proper Multi reigon conversion that plays RCE DVD's as well)

For the amp the yammy is only 65watts per channel and it won't even be near that as the transformer wont cope with all channels running high volume. You are better going for a slightly better amplifier as it will have better ability to drive your speakers (not just loudness but how sharp it can start and stop sounds).

I think the best amp under £400 is;

Marantz SR4400 at £269.95 (www.avland.co.uk although I am sure it could be found a little cheaper). It includes 6.1 channels, and proper 96khz 24bit Dacs and all the decoding modes you could need for films. It is 80watt per channel RMS and will control the speakers much better than the Yamaha.

By going for the Pioneer, Marantz combo as well as having a much better film reproduction than your chosen items, You will also have a surprisingly capable music performer up to most entry level dedicated Hi-fi seperates. Very good for Music DVD's and compatible with SACD and DVD-a which quite often have surround mixes of the music and I am sure you will also get very acceptable CD playback using the Pionner as a transport and the Marantz amp to decode the digital info.

Hope this helps.......

Give me a shout if you want any more information, help or maybe some advice with speaker selection if you don't already have some.

I will search my reviews incase I have overlooked any items and will get back to you when I find the best prices for the items.

John

P.S. It would also be worth upgrading to some better interconnecting cables at some point as the cables you get free with stuff really do affect the sound quality (maybe start with a reasonable digital coax as this will really help the sound the amp can produce).

:thumbs:

[AshT_200]

try www.techtronics.com

Go for Enterprise Multimod to enable all regions.

I got the Panasonic DVD DVD RA71 and Picture through Panasonic 32inch Widescreen TV is Superb.

http://www.homecinemachoice.com/testbench/DVDPlayers/Panasonic/PanasonicDVD-RA71.shtml

[mr-mac]

While on the subject of quality for pound about how much to spend and what the diffrence is - thought I would add my 2 pence on that as well.

Hi-fi (also read AV) suffers from the effect of deminishing returns.

At the bottom end of the market there are massive noticeable diffrences in quality at every little increase in spend. at the top end of the market where we are talking big money the improvement on sound to the pound get less and less.

There is probably a bigger, more noticeable diffrence in quality between items at £150 and £200 than there is between somthing costing £2000 and a similar item at £3000.

[Daniel san]

Steve, if you wanna spend the extra I think the Panasonic DMR50EBS recorder is a pretty good bet. Forget reviews etc etc as it's tried and tested that tells you if it's any good or not. That unit is a fine bit of kit which curry's dixons do for £255 on the web. The picture is good and the sound output is perfectly adequate for the sort of system you'll be plugging in to.

If that doesn't float your boat, then you could plump for any one of about 5 dvd players that start at £100 ish for a Pioneer Dv360 inc multi region, or the Pana version S35 again multi reg at circa £100, then there's the Pana S75. It depends on your main usage of the machine. If it's going to be used for films 95% of the time rather than playing music CD's, then I'd just go for the Pioneer DV360 at £100 and be done with it. It plays Cd's, DVD,s CDR's, MP3 discs no probs and you won't tell any difference between it and a £200 sony on films. There will maybe be a small difference on music but you'd have to justify the extra money for yourself really.

As for an amp, Denon AVR1604 at around £250. Silver to match pretty much whichever dvd player/recorder you go for and a good all round unit with 2 year warranty. Here's a pic http://www.denon.co.uk/images/avr-1604-600.jpg

Whatever you go for make sure you use half decent cables too. No need to go mad but something that improves over the crappy stuff that usually comes with it. I'm sure you're already on the ball with regards to this anyway mate:)

Happy shopping

[SteveCarter200]

Cheers for the replies.:thumbs:

The DVD and amp are replacements for 6 year old gear (Panasonic A350 and Yamaha RX-V592RDS) which has been OK but the DVD is playing up a bit (unless the disc is perfect I get blocking) and the amp doesnt have its own DD processor, low power rear output and Ive always noticed a bit of tizz at the top end.

TV is a 28" Panasonic.

Speakers are:

Front: Acoustic Energy AE109
Centre: Tannoy Mercury mC
Rear: Mordant Short 05i.

Cables are all good quality.

[Daniel san]

Mate, didn't know you had that DVD player! I've got the Denon version of it, which just means the sound and picture chips are upgraded a tad but it still goes blocky on some discs, but hey, I don't really use it that much so I just let Kel moan.

[SteveCarter200]

Yep, twas good and fooking expensive in its time. I bought it in a sale for £500 many many moons ago.:eek: :eek: I guess it shows that its a fairly quality bit of kit as its lasted me over 6 years.

Time for something new though. Well, for the front room anyway as I am going to move the amp and DVD to my bedroom. Now thats gonna annoy the neighbours.:D

[Daniel san]

Yeah, not cheap....and the price of the Denon upgraded version.....£700!

[mr-mac]

You defo should think about the pioneer/marantz I recommended because you are using reasonable hi-fi speakers (ok so they are not all voiced to work together but they will be revealing enough to really show up week components for the sound).

As I mentioned before they will also double as quite an impressive music system as well even with just CD and none of the new formats. The Marantz is a country mile ahead of the yamaha in the sound stakes for music and movie duties and as far as I can see in my reviews the pioneer DVD player is thought of better than the sony one. The do say, and they are not sure why, but if you want to use a projector the sony is the one to have but on a TV the pioneer gives a better picture.

Cheers

John

PS If you can find somewhere that has the yamaha and marantz amps on demo and give them a listen (I think www.richersounds.co.uk have both amps available so check and see if there is a branch near you. I do think you will be surprised how good the marantz is for the money.

[SteveCarter200]

OK, youve talked me into it. £460 will be leaving my bank account tomorrow.:)

I'd like to upgrade the rears sometime, any suggestions (not too pricey, circa £100)?

[mr-mac]

Rather than going for the best speaker..... It is always best in AV to get speakers voiced to work together.

I will have a scan about to see if you can get rear's that will be a good tonal match to your main L and R speakers.

I would however say the centre speaker needs attention (it handles 80% of all sound and you will loose a lot of clarity and sound stage by non matching speakers.

Give me a day I'll get back to you and see what there is in the discount places (plus shop around you may get the marantz cheaper I didn't check lots of sites.

John

[SteveCarter200]

Goddammit!:mad:

Went to Richer Sounds today to buy the amp and DVD only to find them pulling the shutter down as I walk up to the shop. Fooking early closing on wednesdays.

Arseholes.:furious:

[Daniel san]

LMAO

Steve = :furious:

Dan = :D :wave:

:p