Cheapest possible home cinema

Posted by: Jonathan Gorse on 11 March 2002

A pal at work is looking to buy a complete home cinema package and has been looking at Aiwa packages at £500 ish. I have suggested that a £100 DVD player £150 processor and £300 speaker package would be a better quality solution for not much more money and would offer a wider range of upgrade possibilities.

He would like an all regions DVD and a subwoofer and I'd appreciate any recommendations as to where the best 'hot deals of the month' are to be found.

I realise this is not exactly Naim level kit but we have to start somewhere and great oaks from little acorns grow!

Thinking caps on lads - a real home cinema experience for £500? - can you do it?

Jonathan

Posted on: 11 March 2002 by Andrew Randle

Starting off with NAD kit in stereo could be a good start for £500.

Mission M71 loudspeakers at about £120 are excellent too.

Andrew Randle
Currently in the "Linn Binn"

Posted on: 11 March 2002 by Alex S.

Tricky one!

Looks like a job for Richer Sounds and the mail order pages.

One word of advice, do not buy a sub if this is your budget, it would be a ghastly experience.

For information I did home cinema sort of on the cheap:

32.5/110 I already had, Yamaha E800 processor (£260 mail order), AE1s as left and right which I already had, AE Aegis Centre (£80 cast off), Eltax bipolar rears (£100 from Richer Sounds), Paradigm PDR10 sub (£150 from RS). The latter is only switched on for the kids' films and even they complain.

I also had the Denon 1601 receiver for a while - quite adequate for AV but pretty nasty for 2 channel. If your friend insists on an all in one package, I'd look at Denon and Yamaha as the best candidates.

Alex

Posted on: 11 March 2002 by Chris Bell

I built a cheap home theater with the following gear:

Sony Processor SDP-E800, brand new on E-bay: $78.00 (Dolby Digital only, no DTS)
5 Antique Sound Lab Wave mono blocks: $115.00 ea. (8 watts channel)
1 MTM Subwoofer $250.00 (Cheap Chinese made sub)
Rega Center Channel
Rega Alya's (pair)
Used Polk stand mouted 2 ways
Bunch of fancy looking, but cheap interconnects.
Mystery speaker cable.

The Sony processor has tons of adjustments, EQ, and bass boost. It seems the trick with cheap home theater is to remove all of the brash high end, and crank the bass. I also maxed out all of the delay settings. It's the oppisite approach of my Naim system, but sounds surprisingly good and fast.

Chris Bell