Monoprice or bust-My home theater is FINALLY done!

[Perversion]

So I resituated my entire room/setup last night, and I'm gonna need some stuff to accomodate the new arrangement.


Wall mount for a 32"=$12
40' HDMI cable for in-wall=$15
HDMI splitter (1x4, 1.3a)=$120...I thought I was gonna need to spend about $400 on this alone.

And I've not even looked at the speaker mounts yet!



So, Mora, as again you'll probably be the only one looking at this topic...I was not able to locate an A/V patch bay on the site. Do you know if they even carry something like that? I wouldn't see why they wouldn't. Or could you point me in the direction of where I'd be able to find something like that?

[John Mora]

Re: Monoprice or bust

What do you mean by an A/V patch bay?!

[Perversion]

Re: Monoprice or bust

Well, in audio engineering, some setups use a patch bay. Basically, instead of having to unplug and re-hook up all your equipment every time you want to change something around for a project or something, a patch bay has every input and output, and thereby, every possible connection you'd ever want to make, in rack-mountable form, for every piece of equipment you'd be using. To reconfigure your setup, instead of unhooking from the back of the equipment each time, you'd just run a patch cable from whatever output you want to whatever input you want on the front of the patch bay.


Granted, it's probably impossible with a (mostly) digital setup, but I'd LIKE to be able to route audio and video signals (as high as component is what I'm guessing I'd be limited to) to different devices if need be without unhooking everything each time I want to work on a audio/video project.

[Perversion]

Re: Monoprice or bust

Okay, so I ordered everything I need to finalize my setup. Most of it came yesterday.

It is as follows:

Main PS3 output to a 1x2 HDMI splitter, one end going directly to my 32" Sony, and the other to my receiver.

Receiver HDMI output going to a 1x4 splitter, one again to the Sony and the other to my DLP. I've got two more outputs to play with (I like flexibility), one of which will most likely go to my 30" Samsung HD CRT in the bedroom when I get that set up.

LFE output on the receiver going to a Monster THX-certified Y splitter, one end of which goes to a Boston Acoustics 10" (down to 40 Hz) front-firing subwoofer on the left side of the DLP, the other end to another identical Monster Y splitter. This splits to my smaller Polk Audio sub (down to 80 Hz), also front-firing, on the right side of the setup, and to another Boston Acoustics sub (floor-firing) that was part of the surround package I picked up from work, and which is situated behind the main seating for my home theater (a loveseat).

Speaker-wise, I've got 2 Boston Acoustics bookshelf speakers as my main surrounds, one on top of a tall bookshelf and the other mounted to the wall. I've got 2 smaller rear surrounds on speaker stands behind the loveseat, two floor-standing speakers as my front pair, and a decently beefy center channel. My whole speaker setup is Boston Acoustics (minus one of the subs), which I know is not high end by any stretch, but I got most of them on closeout from work, and they do sound nice and clean, with good, crisp highs and mids.

All of my analog connections, including speaker wire, are Monster cable, short of the connections from the older video game consoles. My receiver is a Pioneer 1018, which was the highest-end 2008 model before you enter the Elite series. It upscales ANY standard def signal (nice for Xbox, Dreamcast and Gamecube games, not to mention Wii games), and expands lower-quality MP3s into sounding at least decent. It is able to send uncompressed PCM (in addition to Dolby TrueHD) from Blu-Ray or HD-DVD to the speakers, which makes a bigger difference than I thought it would. No more Toslink (fiber optic) connections!


Only thing missing right now is having my smaller Sony mounted on the wall. I ordered a swingout arm mount, but the mounting patterns supported were only VESA 50/75/100, and the Sony uses VESA 200. I just need to order a $4 mounting plate adapter from Monoprice, and I THINK I'll be set. 2 years later, and I can finally stop tinkering with my setup and leaving it half-assed because I know I'll need to add something later.


For the foreseeable future, I'm done.


As far as cost goes, I just did a rough guestimate, and ONLY including speakers, both TVs, the receiver, and all connections and speaker wire, etc, it's at about $3500. This does not include consoles, minidisc deck, DVD recorder, etc. So as Mora likes to joke, if I didn't spend $3000 on one speaker, my setup is weak, but I'm happy with it.



I might add some pics in a bit.

[John Mora]

Re: Monoprice or bust

For the foreseeable future, I'm done.

OLED and 2k+ say hi!

[Toaster]

Re: Monoprice or bust-My home theater is FINALLY done!

A *****in' home theatre set-up doesn't mean **** if your decorating senses match that of Buffalo Bill. :I

[Alex]

Re: Monoprice or bust-My home theater is FINALLY done!

I had a projector system with 5.1 digital surround sound but then I downgraded to a 17" inch LCD TV and a pair of these guys:




It was too much of a hassle and looked cluttered. But I can still play video games on my walls or ceiling if I want to.


pix plz