My New Onkyo Home Theater

Finally I'd bought my home theater to go with my 50" Full HD Plasma. I had initially gave up the hope of getting an AVR and just get those Samsung or Panny's home theater system but when I saw this baby, I know I need to have it. It's Onkyo HT-S5300 home theater set which come with 7.1 system. The best part, it also come with an iPod/iPhone dock (charging) to go with it. How cool is that. I had initially plan to get a 5.1 system but since this system can go up to 7.1, I guess I can always use it later on when I have an AV room of my own. 

The HT-S5300 home theater comes with Onkyo's R580 AV receiver. It supports the new HDMI v.1.4a (which support 3D and Audio Return Channel). Although I am not currently using a 3D-TV but at least I am ready for it if I do upgrade in the future. It comes with audio & 1080p video processing via HDMI and I have 4 of those on the input and 1 output. I'm currently plugging in my Unifi TV box and also Media Player into the AVR. I still have two more for future use (i.e PS3 or XBox) and also Blu-Ray player. As usual, the AVR supports the highest level of sound like:

• Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD High-Resolution Audio;
• Dolby Pro-Logic IIz which features 2 more front high speaker input and 
• Burr-Brown 192 kHz/24-bit DAC (PCM1690) for all Channels. 

There's plenty of stuff in the specification sheet but I do not know from one to the other so no point writing it all out in here. 

The home theater come with one big 25cm Cone Sub-Woofer . Particularly like the conic legs underneath. Makes it look so classy. This baby weights 10.7kg. Not that heavy actually.

As mentioned the home theater is a 7.1 sound system so it means there's 7 speakers and one sub-woofer. The top horizontal one would be the center front speaker. It has a max. input power of 130W with 6 Ohms impedance. The two tall vertical speaker underneath the center speaker would be the front surround speakers. And the 4 smaller ones would be the surround and surround back speakers.

Lastly the iPod/iPhone dock for connecting my music with the AVR and also movies (480p only). The dock is so slick since it's a match with the AVR. And most importantly it charges my iDevice at the same time. How cool~!

So here's a rough diagram showing how a 7.1 surround system is being place. Being the geographical nature of my current living room. I am not able to place the 4 remaining surround and surround back speakers for the time being. Maybe I really need to do some modification on my plaster ceiling to pull the cables back from the AVR. For the time being, just gonna enjoy the current 3.1 system (which sound sound good on DTS). Tested my new home theater on Resident Evil and Ip Man 2 on DTS. Damn the sound system was so blardy loud. But as the technician said, the speakers need to be season in due time for better sound quality. Well let's see then. For the time being, gonna copy some DTS movies from my friends to test my new baby out.

(Picture courtesy of Cbiz)