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)

New Toy @ Home

Finally my new toy had arrived. My friend initially told me I can get it on Sunday but at the end since most of his staff was not free, the delivery need to be delayed to Monday. Had waited in the house anxiously waiting for the cargo to arrived. Actually I never saw a 50" Plasma box before. I saw 42" or maybe 47" in the shop and it's really large. Finally when I saw them carrying down the box, it was really large. The plasma itself weight more than 30kgs. So they opened the box up and started to set up the stand as I am putting in on my new TV console soon. Nope, not hanging it on the wall. 

Well, since my TV console is not here yet. The plasma will just have to sit on the floor for the time being. My media player on the left white the iPTV box on the right. Just nice. Gonna bring down the router and add in a switcher too after the TV console had been installed hopefully by the week end. Quickly tested the quality of the plasma with some of the Full HD movies downloaded from my friend's achieve. What better movie to test rather than Avatar. And no that is not Avatar on the screen, it's Resident Evil IV on 1080 also . 

As you can see, the old 21" CRT next to the new 50" Plasma. It's like David & Goliath. Still flicking around with the settings and I am really glad right now that I am locating my Plasma under the stairs now. Cause it's far away from my sliding window which will give reflection issue if you are gonna watch it in the afternoon. Now I don't have to worry about glaring and other lighting issues. I can even use the plasma to go online and check in Facebook. Cool~! 

My First Media Player - HiMedia H600A

Finally I'd decided on my media player after some long online searching through forums. The winner is HiMedia from China. OK, I know some of you are probably thinking how good is a China made product is. Well, this could be the heavy weight champion of the media player if I do say so myself. And the price is really reasonable too. You can probably get a media player for less than RM100 nowadays but I am looking for something that support 1080p Full HD for my coming plasma TV. So I need something good and also not burn my wallet at the same time. You can have other more expensive brand like Ac Ryan HD2 or Western Digital's Media TV, but those price tag will go as high as RM500-RM600 and above. So I don't need that. 

I am looking for something that support most of the common video files like, *iso, *ts, *mkv, *avi and *rmvb. Second would be the video format which support from 480p up to 1080p (60Hz). So for 1080p I will need a HDMI 1.3 input from the media player which is really important. Not many players out there which support a 1.4 version of the HDMI but I am not using that for my Plasma so it doesn't make any different here. I heard that v1.4 only applicable for 3D-LED for their high speed transfer. Another important thing is the user friendly GUI and also redesigned remote control. The remote control is really solid and has all the short cuts available with a single push of a button. It doesn't really look like anything from China in fact. 

Just tested it out with my old 20" CRT TV the whole weekend and was really satisfied by it. But using it on a 20" CRT is like installing a turbo charge engine inside a Kancil. LOLX! Now I am still thinking whether to wait for the new LG's PV250 50" FHD Plasma or just get Panny's U30K instead. Contemplating~!!!