The Background
When I was in sixth form (16-18) back in England, I built up a cheap separates stereo system from working a lot of extra part time shifts. I loved that set up. I’m no audiophile, but I did like that set up. Rotel amp, Philips CD player, Aiwa tape deck and JPW speakers, mostly from Richer Sounds and from local dealers. I also had a cheap 15" TV and Memorex VHS VCR to go with it - hey, I was a student!
I pretty much got by that for 6 years until I came to Japan for the JET program when I lived on a portable CD/MD player, and that was it, until 1999 when I came back to Japan again having sold my student set up for the air fare! Within a couple of weeks in my empty, tiny, apartment, I had a cheap Sony QBric stereo, a Sharp VCR and a 19" Toshiba TV - the latter two for a combined total of about 25,000yen. I ran this cheap and small setup for 6 years, because I thought I’d be leaving Japan ’next year’. Obviously that didn’t happen.
New Situation
However, I’d been putting money away to upgrade the A/V system ‘at some point’, but I hadn’t really thought much about it, and though I didn’t like the setup, I never disliked it enough to go out and do something about it. All was fine then, until we moved into this new apartment last year when it became apparent that the TV was too small. We were sitting in one corner of our living room, and weren’t be able to see the picture on the TV clearly, and add to that that the CRT was finally getting a bit blurred. This isn’t to say we have a large apartment. This is Tokyo. We don’t. The TV was too small to sit anything more than about 2 metres away from. Therefore, I swallowed my dreams of a ‘healthy’ bank balance, and went looking for another setup - quite enthusiastically.
I’d already decided that this was an audio visual setup, not just the stereo, surround sound and TV as a separate thing, mainly as I couldn’t afford to buy completely separate systems. Therefore I wanted a decent sized TV, and a surround sound system which wouldn’t annoy me when listening to music on it. OK, so I needed to whittle it down. The best thing here is that living in Tokyo, I have a huge selection, the downside being…there’s a huge selection. Therefore, the first stop was brushing up on the technologies and players in the game. I checked a few review sites, but most weren’t very good, but digging around on generic sites (like Wikipedia) and some company sites like Dolby and DTS, help you at least get the basics. Also, get a demo disc you know and like and take it with you (mine was ‘Hero’). Especially on the screen side, if they want you to part with that much cash, they should take ten minutes to let you watch a bit of your own DVD. Basically, it’s whether, in a comparison, you like what you see and hear.
We decided early on on a budget, balancing things which mattered to us, and we started making decisions. Really, like most things. Get a budget and stick to it. This more than anything else (except maybe motorbikes!) can get very expensive very quickly if you start doing the ‘if we spend a little more…’ thing.
We looked at TVs - CRT, Plasma and LCD, which is also the order in which they price. I like the view of a CRT, but we’d decided we wanted a 26inch widescreen, and in a CRT, although the picture is great at that size, the units are as deep as they are wide, and again we’d be looking at loosing a chunk of our living room to a hunk or black or silver plastic. OK, we’d ‘save’ money but we decided it would be better to make every part of the apartment space count.
Next - Plasma. The inch/yen rating on these are quite good, and compared to LCD, you get a bigger screen for a given budget, but there are two things we found we both agreed on - even the nice screens had noticeable ghosting, and they all have very shiny screen covers to presumably increase contrast, but which also reflects any light around it in much the same way a CRT tube does. OK, so the plasma idea was on hold whilst we look at LCD.
Firstly, I should say there are a huge variety in picture qualities on LCD, and after looking at a lot, we decided the best screens in our budget/size range were the Samsung, and the well liked Sharp Aquos. Compared to plasma, there’s much less ghosting - none on the larger Aquos’, and the LCD screens are more matt like in finish. After a lot of thought, and on my part watching ‘Hero’ as a demo disc for quite a while, we went for a 32inch Sharp Aquos 32AD5 screen. In fact we went a little over budget to get the 32 over the 26, but we made that back in ‘points’ at the shop for future purchases, so we thought we’d done OK. The Samsung was a close second it should be said! In retrospect, I should also say that not only is the screen amazing (certainly compared to my old one!) but the sound is also better than my old stereo!
So what of the surround sound? You’ll notice here, I’m a bit more interested in sound for some reason, and I honestly don’t know why. Through listening and reviews, I’d narrowed it down to Pioneer or Yamaha, based on 3 things: price, sound quality, and speaker size. This is because I certainly want something which sounds OK, but I don’t want to have to use the sub-woofer as a coffee table - I’m just not that insane about it. I listened to some music I knew through each setup, and again used ‘Hero’ as a demo disc to test some setups in shop, and came away very torn. Eventually, I bought the DSP-AX557, a very capable tuner/amp which trumped it’s opponents based on a great clear sound, lots of inputs (in D4, the most common Japanese high definition connector), and an ‘up-mix’ function meaning even RCA inputs came out in D4 to the TV. Less cables, and a better picture! Also, this thing has every decoder and DSP you can name - make sure your DVD player and amp can make the most of the material, and spend some time on the Dolby and DTS websites to see what it is each does! - it’s not as straight-forward as it should be!
On the speaker front, and having read that setting up surround systems can be a bit more complex than the two speaker stereos, I decided to go with a recommended Yamaha set, which just happened to be exactly what I wanted - small compact speakers with natural wood finish - NS-P436, which sounded great in-shop, and even better in my apartment. This is the first time I’ve had a sub-woofer, and when watching ‘Big Trouble in Little China’, the thunder in one scene felt like it was shaking the building. Maybe turn that down a little. Actually, I was only planning to get a 5.1 setup, but those speakers are actually 6.1, as is the amp, but I got them for pretty much the same price as the 5.1s as they were the last ‘wood’ ones left in the shop, and they wanted rid of them. It seems everyone else wants silver this year! The sound quality is great through these, especially given the amplifier options. I know ‘purity’ is important, but I am willing to suffer some DSP if it sounds OK, and it does. Also, don’t forget to get speaker stands - it may seem like a lot, and take up a little room - but it adds immeasurably to the experience in films. I had to wait a week to get the stands (to match the speakers…no, I didn’t want silver speaker stands), but after installing them it was like going from a good setup to a fantastic one.
As a bit of a computer fan, what about computer integration? Well, to be honest, I see using my computers, and watching TV/DVDs as two different things, and I don’t think that whole ‘convergence’ thing is there yet. That said, I have given a nod to it in the form of an IO Data Avel Player (English link). Depending on where you live, these are either normal looking DVD players with a LAN port, or a small modem looking box with A/V connectors on the back, with a LAN and wireless antenna. Mine is the latter - no DVD, but it’s tiny. Basically, this is a hardware and software thing. A small server app runs on the PC (Windows, Mac and Linux are supported), and you connect the Avel Player to the LAN and the TV. Then you can watch movies from the computer based server on the big screen. Actually watch online trailers on a big TV with big sound. It’ll also do iPhoto style photo slideshows and play music from iTunes (though I use my Airport Express for that as the audio is better). Basically then, it’s a DivX based player, but will handle quite a few other codecs, as well as letting you plug in USB hard drives and playing movies off of it directly. For me, it’s been nice for encoding all my UK comedies from DVD and watching episodes on demand. It’s also nice to see all the photos on a big screen. As I mentioned above, I also have my Airport Express, meaning I can stream my iTunes music into the stereo system in the living room, which saves a lot of space on CD cases in a small apartment!
Notes and tips: After several months of having this set up, I still love it. I’ve tuned it a bit and I have to say that I don’t regret a yen. However, when I saw a review online of several ‘Home Cinema Setups’, the cost of ours didn’t even qualify for their ‘basic setup’. If that’s the case, there must be awesome things out there. Back to ours. Get fibre for audio - this might be obvious, but check anyway and fibre is about the same as copper nowadays. Fibre not only gives a purer sound route, it also allows your DVD player to really pull out those discrete surround channels from Dolby EX and DTS soundtracks. That goes for Playstation 2’s too. You won’t notice the difference as much as in films, but put FIFA or Burnout 3 on with the amp on Dolby Prologic IIx Game, and you can hear the crowds chanting away in the background. The downside of the PS2 on such a big screen is that you really can see it’s resolution beginning to show - roll on those hi-def games consoles! Also, if your DVD player supports ‘progressive scan’ put that on too - it’ll clean up a few moire patterns on some DVDs, and since you’ve already got it, it wont cost you any more.
In summary, I’m very happy with the new setup - I came in around my budget, and got more than I expected. The LCD screen is fantastically detailed, and the sound just adds to it - it really is the cinema experience in many ways. It’ll also make you re-watch DVDs again - action films benefit from the effect of things flying around you, and the bigger on-screen effects, but even things you wouldn’t expect, like X-Files episodes for example, benefit from the rear channel ‘creepiness’ factor being there. As a fan of suspense and ‘creepy’ films, this was a really pleasant surprise. OK, sales pitch over - we started thinking about the TV, and that in itself is great, but what I discovered is that adding a simple surround system to a setup more than pays for itself.
Note: Updated January 2006 for Avel Player and the Airport Express (even though I’d already had them both since September and June 2005 respectively).
