Now shopping time!
I’m ending the adventure of A/V spec investigation and shopping comparison sites (took me 3 weeks!), and am switching to the shopping phase.
Now: I have a laptop (ThinkPad X40), 500GB external HDD and Airport Express. Nothing else. Goal: Decent size screen HDTV with 5.1ch audio to enjoy DVDs, videos on the net and my music library. Budget = $3000
Here’s the list of things in my cart (in my head) now.
- Samsung HL-S5088W: 50” DLP rear projection TV. 1080p. 2 HDMI inputs. HD tuner. $1730- Plateau SR-V (65): Nice looking TV stand. $699- Apple Mac mini 1.66GHz Core Duo with 1GB RAM. $674- Yamaha RX-V659: 7.1ch Receiver. 4 Optical Inputs. $305- Yamaha NS-SP1600: 5.1ch Speakers. $149- Samsung DVD-HD960: HD conversion DVD player that upscales to 1080p. $170- Apple AirPort Extreme: WiFi router and NAS. $175It’s $3900 in total and obviously exceeds my budget, but it’s a good line-up.
For #1, I can choose the other model HL-S5087W which is $200 cheaper. I’m not sure the differences matter to me or not, though. The existence of QAM tuner might allow me to watch TV channels without Comcast STB, and the service menu to disable overscan for PC input sounds very important. (5087W can do this also, but it never sticks, apparently)
I can cut off #6 if Mac mini can play Region 2 DVD without any problems, and upscales SD DVD to 1080p smoothly (Does anyone have any info?). I assume I can use the DVD drive for my laptop (WinXP) to host region 2 DVD and stream to Mac using VLC server/client.
I can cut off #7, at least for now, since I know Mac mini does Wi-Fi and I can just keep using AirPort Express as a router, not a client. Now it’s $3550 with the cut-off.
#2 is a bit expensive and there may be other choices that I can save up to $370 here.
Oh, and there may be small things I need to buy to connect everything. mini-to-optical audio, DVI-HDMI, HDMI cables, and UHF antenna to catch OTA HD (If I don’t sign up Comcast for HD programming). Lots of things…