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[Ecrofirt]

And I thought, "What the hey, I'll ask at GA!"

And then I realized it rhymed.

And then I danced.


And now I'm asking about a surround sound system.

-

I'm looking for something good, but not terribly expensive. $300 limit? I don't even know how good that is.

 

[vatstep]

People are going to tell you to avoid home theater in a box sets. I disagree. They're pretty good starter sets; if you're new to surround sound, they'll still sound amazing. $300 is pretty low, but you can find some okay ones at that price. I'm guessing you don't want a DVD player included, right? Check these ones out:

Yamaha YHT-160

Onkyo HT-S580

Both of those have MSRPs of $300, but can be found cheaper. Froogle 'em. If you want to go really cheap, the Panasonic SC-HT05 can be found for about $175 and is pretty amazing for that price compared to more expensive sets.

A good HTIB will also let you upgrade as you go along. When buying one, you just need to make sure that it's going to have the inputs that you need. A lot of them skimp on the digital inputs; you'll want at least three or four.

 

[Ecrofirt]

Correct, I don't need a DVD player.

I'm just looking for something that will go nice with the HDTV I'll be buying later this year, and will make current-and next-gen games use their full sound features. So it's got to be something with Pro Logic 2, and I have no idea what else.

What exactly is theater in a box? Speakes and decoder in the same package? If I can get a superior system for <= the same price by buying seperately, I'd very much consider that.

 

[vatstep]

HTIB is just everything you need to set up a system. A superior system, components purchased separately, will cost more.

Pretty much any receiver/HTIB will have what you want as far as gaming is concerned. Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Pro Logic II and dts 5.1 are what's supported now and will be supported for next-gen.

 

[heavy liquid]

For <$300, I also think your best bet is the theatre-in-a-box route. I'm not sure if you can piece together separates for cheaper and better than the boxes vatstep pointed out. Those are nothing to be ashamed of... they're good beginning systems for the price.

The only other thing you could do is look around for used equipment. Or open item equipment at stores. I've seen some decent opened receivers at Circuit City and Best Buy for pretty cheap, for instance. You might be able to piece together a decent system for around $300 bucks that way, too.

 

[Ecrofirt]

Well, I'm not really looking into having complete aural orgasms whenever I listen to the sound from the speakers, so I figured $300 would be the max I'd allow myself. The whole thing got spurred when I was at Wal-Mart and they had stuff for $200. I had a good feeling they wouldn't be the best stuff, so I thought I'd go with the $300

 

[JayFro]

You sound like me about a year ago, I had an HTIB but unfortunately the one I had couldn't be connected to my Xbox for 5.1. It was good for movies and such and I started looking at other HTIB's at first but I ended up piecing the system together through the help of the AVS.com forums. I think for most people an HTIB will be great, but the more I researched it the sooner I found that for me the best solution was more in the $1400+ range. That included the receiver, speakers, sub woofer, speaker wire, and DVD player.



JayFro

 

[Ponn]

Well, I'm not really looking into having complete aural orgasms whenever I listen to the sound from the speakers, so I figured $300 would be the max I'd allow myself. The whole thing got spurred when I was at Wal-Mart and they had stuff for $200. I had a good feeling they wouldn't be the best stuff, so I thought I'd go with the $300

I got a Sony system in a box at walmart for about 300 bucks last christmas to go with my samsung DLP. Worked great and had all the game systems hooked up to it. As long as you aren't an audiophile that obsesses over OGG or FLAC or all that then it should do just fine for your needs. Just make sure it decodes all the DTS and Dolby Digital and THX and has Digital audio input.