I almost surprise myself when I think for how long I went without a decent home cinema setup. A year or two back I bought a reasonably cheap surround sound system. Last month I suddenly realised my TV in the living room was only 32″. It didn’t bother me until I realised it was actually about the smallest TV I could have! This had to be changed, so off I went to the internet. I wanted full HD (1080p) and DLNA so I could stream content direct to the TV from my home network and it seemed John Lewis had an amazing deal on a Samsung 50″ Plasma, but I would have to wait as it wasn’t in stock.
Me being the impatient type I hunted round for other options, but the Samsung was such a great deal at under £600 including my discount, I would have to just wait. When it finally got delivered, I could barely believe the size of it! I struggled to put it together on my own. I was even more impressed when I actually turned it on!
HD channels finally look different to their regular counter part. On my old 32″ HD TV, you couldn’t really tell, but now the difference is clearly visible. In the past I’d used my PS3 to stream TV shows from my file server to the TV, now the TV can do this itself. I wondered about selling the PS3, but apparently it’s one of the better BluRay players on the market still, so I might as well keep it. I’ve yet to actually watch a BluRay on it though.
Yesterday the final piece of the puzzle came, now I’ve figured out how to use optical audio cables, I connected the TV to the surround sound system. (The same cable can be used to connect the PS3 to the amp) I watched Full HD Avatar yesterday, through the surround sound… it really was as good as being in the cinema!
Now, you might ask ‘But Andy, 3D is the latest tech, why is your TV not 3D?’ Well, for starters, 3D TV’s are going to be above £1,000 at this point, but what concerns me more is the cost of the glasses, which I understand to be around £100 each still. So, lets say there’s a sorting event in 3D and you invite friends round, you’d need to spend another £500-£600 on glasses!
Right now I’m very happy with my setup. My file server automatically downloads my latest US TV shows, into a media shared folder which my TV can play from! Does it get any better?