May 2001

Home-Theater Systems Based on an A/V Receiver

This month we delve into what you can get, and roughly what it is going to cost, if you are looking at a starter home-theater system based around an A/V receiver.

Mini-theater system

The mini-theater is a major improvement over using a TV with built-in speakers. It employs a stereo A/V receiver that will cost $150 to $200, a good pair of $200 bookshelf speakers, and a moderately priced subwoofer. This package will offer a major sound upgrade without a huge investment. There won’t be a lot of money for a high-end video display, so a good 27" monitor will provide decent video from an under-$200 DVD player. Add some moderate cost speaker cables and interconnects and you’ll have a system that runs $1400 to $1500. You won’t have a 5.1 surround-sound system, but this two-channel system will be a very large leap forward from television-speaker sound.

Mini-theater -- planning for the future

An additional $150 to $200 investment in the receiver you buy for your mini-theater system will bag you a 5.1 A/V receiver instead of a stereo receiver. This will allow you to make use of two channels now, and add the other three speakers later when your budget can handle it. Getting the stereo bookshelf speakers from a well-established company with a full range of matching 5.1 speakers will ensure that in one or two years when you can afford the additional speakers, the company will still be around. It will also help ensure that the company will still be making something that is a perfect or a very close match for the first stereo speakers you got.

Entry-level 5.1 system

Now we are talking about a true 5.1 surround-sound system from the outset. "5.1" refers to five main speakers plus one subwoofer (the .1 channel). The five main speakers are front left, front right, front center (for movie dialogue), left-rear surround, and right-rear surround. I strongly recommend matched-sets of speakers. The subwoofer can be matched to the other speakers, or can come from a different company. An entry-level 5.1 system will probably have bookshelf speakers all around with a single subwoofer. You will have to plan on spending around $1000 to $1200 for an entry-level set of loudspeakers. Less expensive sets are available, but the five main speakers will probably be very small, which will force the subwoofer to be small in order to blend with them, as well as to remain inexpensive enough to keep the price of the setup down. This will mean less powerful bass, and a subwoofer that will not reproduce the lowest frequencies. The higher cost entry-level speaker systems will have larger main speakers and a larger subwoofer, both of which will assist in reproduction of the exciting bass found in many modern movies.

The A/V receiver will go for $350 to $500, and a $200 DVD player will be perfect. At this budget, you’ll probably still want to stay with a good 27" monitor in the $500 to $600 range, rather than suffer the lower quality images you’ll get with a low-end 32" monitor for close to the same price. Moderate cost speaker cables, digital interconnect, and S-video cable will run $175 to $200. Adding it all up will put you a bit under $2800 for the system. You’ll have all the basic home-theater features with sound and image quality that is quite entertaining.

Speaker stands and a monitor stand will also be issues you’ll have to deal with in entry-level systems. A stereo pair of speaker stands will cost at least $50, though well-constructed ones will go for $100 or more. If you can get floorstanding loudspeakers for $100 or a little more per pair, you won’t need the stands, and you’ll get better bass performance from the floorstanding speakers.

Mid-level 5.1 system

Now we are getting into some more interesting loudspeaker selections, where your budget will be in the $1500 to $2000 range for five speakers plus the subwoofer. Your receiver budget will be around $1000, where some interesting "extras" may be possible such as six or seven amplifier channels and a rear-center channel via THX Surround EX, and perhaps DTS-ES. Some of the newest receivers at this price-point will also include Dolby Pro Logic II, a definite improvement over the original Pro Logic. The original Pro Logic produces a mono signal for the two rear-channel speakers. Pro Logic II produces 5.1-like sound with discrete sound for the two rear channels. Pro Logic II is compatible with most stereo sources so it can synthesize 5.1 sound from video tapes, TV shows, CDs, etc. Since all other things are equal at the $1000 receiver price-point, I’d take the receiver with Pro Logic II over one that did not have it. DTS Neo:6 is a similar 5.1-from-stereo process developed by DTS.

A mid-level system can exist just fine with a 27" monitor, but a 32" monitor would be a worthwhile step up, but only if you can afford a middle-to-high-line 32" monitor; the cheaper 32" monitors are not visually impressive. There’s still not much reason to spend more than $200 on a DVD player since more expensive models only add DD and DTS decoding, which you already have in your A/V receiver. A bit more money spent on the speaker cables, digital cable and video cable will be noticeable in this system, so upping the cable budget to $300 to $350 is about right. Mid-level options might include a second subwoofer and a rear-center speaker. The average mid-level 5.1 home-theater system will be in the $4000 range.

Step-up system -- 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1

Another incremental increase in the speaker and receiver budget will definitely put you in 6.1 or 7.1 sound if you want the extra channels. If you can’t use the extra channels you can still upgrade the 5.1 system. Going to 6.1, one rear-center loudspeaker, or 7.1, a pair of rear-center loudspeakers, requires space behind the listeners/viewers. Ideally, this space would be about the same as the distance from the rear surrounds to the listeners. You would also want the rear surrounds on the sidewall to the left and right of the listeners, perhaps a bit behind. You would not want the left and right surround speakers on the rear wall behind the listeners. Having the surround speakers on the sidewall, and the rear-center speakers behind gives good spatial separation that will make the rear-center addition worthwhile. You will be shopping for an A/V receiver that sells for about $1500, and $2700 to $3500 loudspeaker sets with five, six, or seven main channels with a subwoofer.

Step-up systems will probably be the first where the budget might allow for a digital 480p monitor and a 480p DVD player. If you shop for a 480p DVD player, note that the cheapest 480p DVD players don’t incorporate the best forms of 3:2 pull-down for movies, or motion compensation for material shot direct to video. These low-cost progressive scan DVD players will have inferior image quality from either or both film-to-video or direct-to-video material (concerts, etc.). Better 480p DVD players have much better logic for 3:2 pull-down and video motion compensation, but they cost $150 to $1200 more than the cheapest 480p DVD players.

Normal TV programming and DVD players produce 480i video. There are 30 frames per second, but each 1/30 of a second is divided into two fields that are displayed for 1/60 of a second each. When there is motion, as in sports or when the camera pans vertically in a scene with horizontal details (stair steps, railings, etc.), the interlacing of the two frames causes some flicker along the horizontal lines or jagged edges on diagonals that are in motion. 480p systems convert the interlaced system into single frames that are displayed for 1/30 of a second eliminating all of the interlace artifacts in the picture. You might think that knitting two fields at 1/60 of a second into one frame every 1/30 of a second would be easy, but it is very tricky. Two years ago, the least expensive product you could buy to do this sold for over $10,000. Today you can get high quality stand-alone products that do 480p for under $900, and there are also DVD players as inexpensive as (roughly) $400 with this capability. There are even less expensive 480p DVD players, but you should observe their image quality very carefully; you may not be happy with one of them if you look closely.

That’s as far as you can go in the starter system realm. Get anything fancier and you are in big-time home theater, which will be more demanding to set-up and a bit fussier to keep optimized, but worth the effort and tweaking.

Final thoughts

Even the mini-system can be improved to a startling degree by using a test and setup DVD to optimize the settings of the video monitor and the receiver. And if you decide to pass on one of these $35 to $45 setup DVDs, always turn the contrast control on a new TV way down immediately after powering up. Ten or fifteen minutes of operation at the factory settings is enough to damage the shadow mask or phosphors...so seriously, turn the contrast control way down. Check the user manual for instructions on setting contrast as soon as you can. And never buy a demo television set. It will be ruined before you even get it home from endless hours of being overdriven to the point that the shadow mask or phosphors, or both, are permanently damaged...another reason not to trust what you see down at the "wall of video" in the electronics department.

 ...Doug Blackburn
db@hometheatersound.com  

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