So it's about 2am here and I'm still searching the internet for a home theater idea. I've ran across multiple speakers and the set I'm leaning towards is the Onkyo SKS-HT240. I'm positive I will purchase these unless someone here can change my mind.
Now the receiver I require is where my problems come in. The market is filled with hundreds of these things and I just can't make my mind up. Am I right to assume a 75 Watt/Channel receiver can adequately handle the HT240's (rated 110W/channel), or would I need to push for something more powerful. On top of that, my original idea was for a minimalist receiver without much need for video options. I own a nice plasma tv with 3 HDMI inputs and was planning on connecting my Xbox360 and Laptop to the TV and output the audio using an optical cable to the receiver. Would this be good enough or am I missing something here? Receiver recommendations welcome.
Hmmm good point. Yeah just specs and reviews I've read all over. I'm not sure what stores would have them set up to listen to so I'm going in blind perhaps, unless someone here can recommend me something better for around the same money.
This I understand, so I will retract my statement on the Onkyo's as I am back to the drawing board. I shouldn't rush into this. As for the general question having to do with outputting the audio (from the xbox360 & laptop) from the television, would there be any real loss as opposed to connecting the audio directly to the receiver? The television is a Samsung HPT 4264 and the Laptop is a Sony Vaio FZ190 (with HDMI output). Just throwing those details in there in case they help.
It's certainly a lot of fun to have your X-Box360 playing on a big screen with full sound immersion. Of course if you're playing some kind of insane shoot-em-up with zombies coming at you from everywhere, it's less 'fun' and more 'terrifying' but that's the nature of the games...!
If you want to be immersed in that soundfield, you need to connect the X-Box to the receiver somehow. You can use HDMI or one of the digital outputs. If your TV has a digital output, then you could plug directly into the TV and use the output to the AV receiver. You should lose nothing in theory. In practice, it's unusual to do this, mainly because the TVs haven't historically had the digital outputs.
The other thing to be aware of is that not all digital connections can be squeezed into each other. i.e. You can't necessarily expect a device to take an HDMI connection and then forward the audio from that connection via toslink to another device. This is why it's more usual to go via the AV receiver which is expected to be able to do that kind of thing more readily, but even then you need to check that the AV receiver can do the scaling/switching/etc. that is involved.
These systems are getting too damned confusing for their own good.
Those are all very good points Frank, thank you, and you are right about the confusing part haha. The reason I'm trying to figure this out is because if I pass the video through to a receiver, I'm afraid of audio/visual delay as well as an increased price point for a good receiver.
Most AV receivers have a lip synch feature which allows you to delay the audio so it synchs up with the video (or is it the other way around? I can never remember). Now this feature is required because on standard DVD there is no marker to synchrionise the audio and video streams when watching a movie. I believe this is fixed in the Blu-ray standard, which is why some AV receivers can claim auto-lip-synch.
That said, some DVDs seem to suffer more from lip synch than others. It's not really a fault of the disc nor of the player, but a 'feature' of the implementation of the movie on the disc, including the Java menus and complexity that is on there, so you cannot guarantee not having the problem by going to one device or another. I can guarantee that your TV won't have lip-synch however, so this is another good reason for going via the AV receiver - and that this has a decent lip synch feature built into it.