My back porch has 2 speakers that the previous owner of the home installed. The wire runs into the living room, but we don't have an AV receiver, so I've never hooked up those outside speakers.
We're finally looking at purchasing a receiver so we hook up those speakers onto Zone 2 and listen to music / the tv / etc while outside.
I'm looking at the Onkyo HT-RC160 for the receiver.
We have a 42" 720P Samsung DLP, Verizon FIOS HD DVR, and a DVD player.
While we're upgrading, we'd like to get a better sound system set up also (just using the tv speakers right now, so you can tell that we aren't that hardcore about sound).
My wife isn't too thrilled about putting speakers up around the living room, and I don't particularly want to run wires, so I was thinking that a soundbar might be a good option.
I was looking at the Sony HT-CT500, the Yamaha YAS-71, or one of the Vizio soundbars. Are these going to all offer 'virtual' surround sound? I know they aren't going to be close to the real thing, but we don't really care that much, and mainly we don't want to run wires or have speakers set up around the room.
Can you hook one of these active soundbars to a receiver? I know they all have built-in receivers, but they wouldn't support the 2nd zone would they? I assume I'm going to have to get a separate receiver in order to use the speakers on the back porch. But will the 'redundant' receiver cause problems?
I looked into the passive receivers which seems like they should be more like what I need, but do those do 'virtual' surround sound? Also, the passive ones seem to be more expensive than the other ones.
Thanks for any help!
We're finally looking at purchasing a receiver so we hook up those speakers onto Zone 2 and listen to music / the tv / etc while outside.
I'm looking at the Onkyo HT-RC160 for the receiver.
We have a 42" 720P Samsung DLP, Verizon FIOS HD DVR, and a DVD player.
While we're upgrading, we'd like to get a better sound system set up also (just using the tv speakers right now, so you can tell that we aren't that hardcore about sound).
My wife isn't too thrilled about putting speakers up around the living room, and I don't particularly want to run wires, so I was thinking that a soundbar might be a good option.
I was looking at the Sony HT-CT500, the Yamaha YAS-71, or one of the Vizio soundbars. Are these going to all offer 'virtual' surround sound? I know they aren't going to be close to the real thing, but we don't really care that much, and mainly we don't want to run wires or have speakers set up around the room.
Can you hook one of these active soundbars to a receiver? I know they all have built-in receivers, but they wouldn't support the 2nd zone would they? I assume I'm going to have to get a separate receiver in order to use the speakers on the back porch. But will the 'redundant' receiver cause problems?
I looked into the passive receivers which seems like they should be more like what I need, but do those do 'virtual' surround sound? Also, the passive ones seem to be more expensive than the other ones.
Thanks for any help!
