Many people obsess over their entertainment kit. To some extent, I do too, but I'm generally unwilling to spend much money on it. For about 5 years I kept a 13" cheap-o-matic tube TV from Walmart because I couldn't bear to spend the money on a good one. It was hardly ideal, but it filled the need for the time.
In September of 2009, however, I bought a house. No longer was 13 inches enough. Downright pathetic, in fact. People laughed at me. Well, since I'm dropping the money on the house and appliances, I figured it was time to upgrade the entertainment as well. Not top-end by any measure, but a few leaps ahead of where I was.
- Power Protection
- APC BR700G Back-UPS Pro 700VA UPS, purchased from Amazon on 2015-12-25
- It's my partially-informed opinion that people tend to skimp on power protection for most of their kit. If you go to Best Buy they'll happily sell you a $200 Monster surge strip for your home theater, but we all know that's garbage. I've opted to instead use the same protection I use for my computers: a good UPS. It's a bummer having to replace batteries every year or two and the whole unit every 3-5 refresh cycles but it's kept my equipment alive and I consider it worth the cost.
- Receiver
- Sony STR-DN1000, purchased from Amazon on 2009-12-26
- TV
- LG 47LB5900, purchased from BestBuy on 2014-08-13
- Sources
- Sony BDPS470 Blu-Ray Player, purchased from BestBuy
- ChromeCast, 2nd Generation, purchased from Google
- Yamaha KX-W321 Dual Cassette Deck, purchased from Amazon on 2010-01-04 (for some reason)
- Speakers
- Klipsch Synergy Quintet III, purchased from Amazon on 2009-12-26
- Polk Audio PSW10 Powered Subwoofer, purchased from Amazon on 2010-01-08
- I also have four in-ceiling speakers that were in the house when I bought it. They weren't installed correctly and don't work right as a result. I have two of them on the surround side channels and the other two aren't connected.
- Universal Remote
- Logitech Harmony 650, purchased at Best Buy
- These save so much hassle and are an absolute joy to configure. Even though they don't support Linux, the user community has developed a toolchain for programming them.
- Miscellaneous
- I use MediaBridge HDMI cables everywhere. They're cheap and have never let me down.
- My speakers are all run over 16AWG in-wall speaker wire -- in the walls, of course.
- My TV feeds audio back into the receiver (for broadcast TV channels) via a TOSlink optical cable.
So... there you have it. I have a fairly extensive DVD and BluRay collection. I find it's generally not hard to entertain myself at home. I'll be sure to keep this page updated as I change the configuration or learn new things about it.