Old Home Theatre Equipment

This TV was my high school grad present. It was a TV. It was nothing special.

This was my first HT stereo. I thought it was great at the time. Now I am acutely aware of how terrible it was. Complete and total crap. The only saving grace (debatable depending on how you look at it) was that it got me into this hobby leading to my current equipment.

I purchased these for my computer (currently using Sennheiser HD-600 phones for this now). Shortly afterwards I realized they sounded better than the Pioneer HTP100 in my living room. They too weren't that great, but significantly better than the Pioneer HTP100. They were the catalyst that started some serious research into HT that lead me to the Home Theater Forum which helped me gain the knowledge which has greatly improved my system.

This was my first satellite receiver. It served me well for over two years. I never needed it but the UHF remote is a very nice feature. As is the ability to program it to control your VCR (it has a strong IR emitter that can bounce the IR off walls, so no cable is required). Next best thing to a PVR.

Klipsch KSB1.1

I used these speakers for my mains and surrounds. They have a 93 dB/W/m sensitivity and a frequency response from 70hz to 20khz (this is a little optimistic, they drop off pretty quick under 100hz). For movies in a room my size, especially after the addition of the Tempest, I was a little better than content. Klipsch horns and high efficiency are great for action flicks. First time I played the lobby shooting spree loud for my brother, he flinched when the gunshots started.

For music the story is a little different. Here I was barely content with them. They image quite well, but they have little to no sound stage. The sound is clear and clean, however, after about an hour of listening my ears would start to hurt.

The JBL S38 oversized bookshelves I am currently using noticeably improved the sound stage and imaging with music. It also became apparent that the KSB1.1 monitors were missing some clarity in the mid and upper frequency ranges (I think the KSB1.1 monitors completely cut out the very top end). The JBL Studio series I have now, made a some what more subtle improvement with HT though.

Klipsch SC1

The SC1 is one generation of Klipsch speakers ahead of the KSB1.1. The KSB1.1 was replaced by the SB1. As far as I can tell the only difference between the two is the SB1 has a 60x90 Tratrix Horn metal dome tweeter while the KSB1.1 has a 40x90 Tratrix horn soft dome tweeter. Regardless I didn't notice any problems with pans across the front three speakers so I didn't worry about the difference. I always listen to music in stereo so I never used this speaker for music. For movies, dialog was always clear and all my comments about the KSB1.1 for movies still apply here. The JBL S-Center I now use is a little clearer and cleaner and performs much better off axis because of its' 3way design.

This was a great little starter sub. Reasonably clean and tight output. Reasonably capable in small to medium rooms if corner loaded. Really lacks the output below 30hz though and starts to strain pretty bad when pushed a little on action soundtracks. As with most commercial subs it is under ported and tuned to high (almost 40hz, yikes). The 10" driver just isn't capable of moving that much air. Given what I'm used to now, the PDR10 is kinda pathetic. But when compared to the sub that came with my first HT stereo it was pretty damn good.

Had enough power to drive the JBL speakers to 10dB below reference, started to have problems at 5dB below reference. Supports DD and DTS, detects both with no problem. In comparison to the Pioneer I had before, definitely more power and a cleaner sound. The most noticeable is on loud sound effects. A good example is the lobby shooting spree in the Matrix. The gun shots were just missing some bite on the Pioneer that the Onkyo provides.

However, it only has a pre out for the sub. Which isn't really a problem. But if you want to go to separates and can't afford both the pre/pro and amp at the same time, you're SOL if this is the receiver you have.

I was very happy with this receiver until it quit on me after almost 3years of use (a year out of warranty). When it was initially cutting out the problem was definately heat related. After having the heat related problem fixed it had a new problem. For no consistently reproducible reason it would lose output from all modes. You could always eventually get it back, but again, there was no consistent quick way to get it back. Local repair place can't fix it (between both repairs I was stereoless for over a month and half) and figure its a main CPU that is gone. I'll eventually be sending it away to try and get it fixed. I'll update this page after that ordeal is over.

Sony KP43T70

Given the size of my room (18' x 12') and that my viewing distance is about 14', I was happy with the size. Looks kinda puny after getting the projector though. As noted in the first section of my site I feel it has significantly better colors and a much sharper picture than the Toshiba 43" sets (although the Toshiba's have a much better black level). The auto convergence function on this set does a remarkably good job.

As a final comment related to the TV. Ignorance is bliss. Don't learn what 3:2 pull down, anamorphic, letter boxed, interlaced, progressive scan, convergence, chroma bug etc mean unless you can afford to get a set that won't be on the wrong side of these terms. I never noticed the artifacts that result from being on the wrong side of the terms until I learned what they are. On a good movie I tend to forget about it. But on eye candy movies, it's almost all I see now :(

Panasonic A120

Last paragraph from the TV applies here too. But, given what my TV was I was happy with this players picture. I never had any problems with it on any disc (except the CDN release of Art of War, but that was the DVD's fault). It's also a little slow on layer changes, but what can you expect from a second gen DVD player.

One For All Cinema 6

I loved this thing. $20 CDN at Costco. I had it completely controlling everything in my system. It was the only remote I needed. I had 6 macros that allowed me to turn my system on and switch between components with single button presses. Given it's cost, easily was the best value in my system. If you are thinking about getting or get one, a must read is this FAQ. The manual that comes with them doesn't tell you how to do a 10th of what this remote can do.

For those who are interested, this is a txt file I made that contains programming instructions I wrote out for myself. Although it doesn't lose it's programming if you change the batteries, it did lose it's programming once when I dropped it. I made that txt file after it took me several hours to reprogram it. With that file I can reprogram the remote in less than 15 minutes.