Travails of Putting Together a Modest Home Theater Setup

After 3 years of dawdling, we finally replaced our 25" TV. I had been planning to get the biggest widescreen, HDTV tube TV you available (36"), but I waited a little too long, because those have disappeared, and all that is left is 34", and those are disappearing fast, too. Given the long length of our TV upgrade cycle, I thought anything less than 36" would be a mistake.

So I wound up getting a 37" Vizio LCD at Sam's. I could have gotten a 42" plasma monitor for the same price. But then I would have had to buy an HDTV tuner, which would have added a bit to the price. Plus, the room we have our TV in has lots of windows, and the LCD is by far the most glare-resistant. 37" seemed adequate, if not immense, for our medium-sized family room.

These things are complicated, nowadays. It took me several hours to get it hooked up with our existing receiver and DVD player. Then a week later, I went out and bought a new DVD player/recorder (had to have progressive scan; might as well get a recorder, while at it), and a new receiver (wanted component video switching). I spent another few hours tonight hooking them up, and I'm still not done--I've got the auxiliary surround sound speaker to go!

So many nasty little wrinkles, though. Such as realizing that I can't switch the non-component video sources (VCR, Gamecube) from the receiver. I passed on a more expensive receiver that "up-converted" low-quality signals to component video, but now think I would have considered it if I had realized it would eliminate the need to separately select a source on the TV, as well as the receiver. Sigh.

I also learned about optical audio cables and ordered a couple. While waiting for them to arrive, I have the DVD audio via RCA cables. And that required a separate selection, deep in the setup menu of the DVD. I probably wouldn't have figured it out without reading the manual.

I have a Vizio TV, Sony receiver, and Toshiba DVD. The quality of the instructions is in that order. The no-name Vizio is great, including a big folding chart, for easy, good OOBE (out-of-box experience). And both the quick-start chart, and the real manual, are printed in color, on glossy, easy-to-read paper. The Sony receiver didn't doesn't that, but does have a decent manual and quick-start guide. Toshiba has a crappy manual, printed on phone-book-thin paper, with wretched translation.

I never buy cables at the big box electronics stores, because I know they are a total, 900% profit-margin rip-off. Buy a $60 inkjet printer, and the sales guy will tell you, as you are walking to the register, that it doesn't come with a USB cable, don't you want to pick up one of those? Sure, and he tosses on the box, and you hardly notice it costs $20. It is (literally and figuratively) gold-plated, not that that actually adds any performance.

In the past, I have ordered cables online for one-tenth the Best Buy price. But I really wanted to get the stuff hooked up, and I didn't have component video cables, so I figured I could do better at Radio Shack. Guess again--they showed me a 6-foot component cable for $30! I said to hell with it, I'll order on-line and wait.

I started searching on-line, but couldn't seem to find what I thought I was looking for. Then it slowly dawned on me--the component audio hooks up using standard RCA cables. Just 3, instead of all-in-1! So I could have spent $30 to buy something I already had! The only difference being that mine doesn't have the R-G-B color-coding that component cables have.