Quote:
Originally Posted by
acash85 
Hi,
This is my first time posting. I need some advice. I recently purchased the Energy 5.1 Home Theater System (link below). I am having trouble deciding on which receiver is the best to purchase for this system. I'm mostly going to be watching movies off my hard drive attached to my TV, and playing games and so on. The TV is the Samsung 55E8000. My intention was to get the Harman Kardon AVR 1700, but I've been doing extensive reading on the receiver, and it seems no expert reviews have come out on it. It seems that the system has good reviews, but from people not too knowledgeable about the issue. The bad reviews are from people with more expertise, and bring up a lot of good points. I like the sleek look of the Harmon Kardons, and my parents had one when I was growing up so they've always been held to a high standard in my book. Is this receiver going to give a good clean, crisp sound and will the connections work properly if run everything through HDMI and run the Optical out from the back of the TV for the movies.....
Additionally, the surround system operates @ 8ohms whereas, the Harman Kardon states "2 channels @ 8ohms/6ohms certified." I have no idea what this means. I'm sure there are alternative receivers that will give me amazing sound, but I'm also on a budget, please provide some good recommendations and/or if this system will give me the sound that I want.
P.S. I have a raincheck for the AVR 1700 @ Frys. But since this receiver goes on sale for $200 every other week, I'm guessing one of the big retailers will have it at $200 again.
Energy 5.1 Take Home System:
http://www.amazon.com/Energy-Classic-Theater-System-Black/dp/B001202C44
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I welcome all opinions/recommendations/advise from people that have used and tested the receiver and from audio experts.
Thanks.
And check Fry's again next Friday, while i was in there auditioning speakers, he told me that it will go on sale 1 more time before they stop carrying it, and it should be next week.
So right now, i am running all of my movies, tv shows, and music from my computer through the hdmi in. (well except the music, i just use Airplay from Itunes) and it works amazing. If you are using an ATI graphics card you can set a preset to make the AVR one of your screens, and make the audio out to it as well, for me i have a shortcut key that I just hit and easy as pie, i have another computer monitor with 5.1 surround, actually works really really well, especially if you can get HQ movies (via download or whatever) and with a wireless keyboard/mouse you could do some gaming with nice 5.1
Let your computer graphics card do all the rendering work for the movies, don't make your TV do that. Also in that process, I have eliminated the need for a smart tv (which typically adds a couple hundred bucks to the price)
And I have EVERYTHING that has an HDMI in, into the receiver, not my TV, no reason for all that, the receiver has 6 inputs, so you can do just that, ATM I have my computer on one, BD player on one, PS3 on one, and XBOX 360 on another, and still have an available slot for later expansion, instead of trying to jerry rig everything to tv, then to AVR, which will probably degrade one or more of the audio/video signals doing all that unnecessary bouncing around.
Edited by budgetocdnerd - 2/2/13 at 7:36pm
