Hello All: I have the unique and unenviable qualities of a discerning senses (both auditory and visual), but not much experience in HT and a very modest budget. I plan to put in the new Panasonic front projection (cannot remember the number, but received excellent reviews online as well a friend has one and raves). ALready own a Bose 5.1 speaker system and a 5 year old SOny 32"XBR crt. Had used a SOny (think DE925 or somesuch) for a few years and liked overall but the amp stopped working and a local shop could not trace the short (or whatever) so I figure it is time to replace, and anyhow there was one major 'fault' in the amp for my taste, that was that there was no video switching, only audio.
My 'pet peve' about HT is that without spending some $300+ on a remote (and even then needing to program it etc) [which, to me is an absurd amount of money to pay for an 'electronics organizer'] no-one besides myself or the occasional 'geek visitor' could ever actually work my system (that is to change from one source to another). I finally broke down and spent the $100 on a Sony touch-screen remote because I had 100% Sony components (because I had thought the S-Link was a great invention but then could never make it work!), but it turns out that Sony does not even make their OWN REMOTE CAPABLE OF WORKING WITH ALL THEIR OWN DEVICES (not only just 'out of the box' but even programability [after 4 hours of my own attempting I got a high-level SOny tech online and he explained that not only were there no program codes for many of they products but that certain functions could not even be trained!].
ANyhow, I figure besides wanting noise-free (hate low level hiss and hum) quality sound reproduction with no perceivable video loss, I want to take more of the complexity out of using the system and one easy way is to stop having to chanve video inputs, so I learned from a local store that I would need 'video up-converting'. I was steered toward an intro 'pro series' Sony (they had for $800 and see online for under $500), but when I went online to a SOny thread site I noted that though many 'techies' raved about sound and features, there was a huge amont of talk regarding 'him' and 'hiss' and discussions of the 'earlier units of each model needing to be returned for work'. I have no interestin spending $500 to $900 (my max budget) on an amp and then needing to return it to a factory for 'reconditioning' and there does not seem to be a way to determine pre-purchase ifthe unit you will buy is of a newer build version.
SO MY QUESTION.... (and if you read this far THANK YOU!!) is: in the $500 to $900 online price, which unit (if any) is likely to provide the quietest, highest quality sound to my Bose (and JBL Studio Monitors for stereo) as well to allow me to use both a CRT and Front Projection (maybe need an external switch for that and if so what kind?), and be able to transparently pass at least 2 component video connections to the picture (to avoid having to chane video inputs at least for the DVD and Satalite/VHS signals)?
Thank you for your time and interest...
Peter
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