My New Home AV Setup

I moved home back in June to a bigger 3 bed flat from my old 2 bed flat, where the 2nd bedroom had to double as guest room and my office.  The extra bedroom is now doubling up as my office and a games room/2nd reception when my mates come around, which means we can have a proper guestroom for when parents and friends come to stay.

The move to a bigger place provided me with an excuse opportunity to upgrade a lot of my Home AV setup.  I’ve had a few requests to list what new AV toys I’ve purchased and how I’ve set them up, including one from Dollarman who’s actually seen it all in action!  I hope this post will help you with any future purchases you might be thinking of making.

Front Room AV Kit

TV: Panasonic TH-65PX600

The majority of the old AV setup from my old Front Rom is now being is being used in the office/games room, so I had a completely blank slate to work with in the front room.  When buying new kit, you should match it to your viewing/listening habits.  In my case I watch a lot of HD content (TV shows and movies) and listen to music, all streamed from my Windows Home Server, so I needed a TV that would support full HD, a PC also able to handle full HD and HD audio (more on this later)  and a receiver that was a good all-rounder.

My front room is fairly big at around 20×20, so I knew I needed a big new TV.  My last TV was only 42″, and even though I was using it in a smaller room it didn’t feel big enough.  I was going to buy a cheap 60″ LG TV, but I just happened to be in John Lewis when they were putting a 65″ Panasonic TH-65PX600 on sale, knocking off £5,500.  Although this still made the TV 50% more than what I was going to pay for my cheapo LG, I knew I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to buy such a high quality 65″ 1080p TV.

I was a bit disappointed when I got to the till and discovered that the Panasonic 65″ TV didn’t come with a pedestal stand, which would cost me an extra £800.  I declined to buy it from John Lewis as I was certain I could find one online for cheaper.  I had a major result, when I found one advertised for £45 on a site where they had clearly missed a ’0′ off on the price, saving me over £400!.  I quickly whipped out my credit card and jumped in my girlfriend’s car (the stand was too big for my car) to pick it up before they realised their mistake!

My good fortune got even better when John Lewis finally delivered the TV, as the stand they’d wanted to charge me £800 for was attached!  I guess they realised the stand was worthless on its own and decided to give it to me, or maybe they didn’t realise it should have been removed.  Either way, I now have 2 stands and I’ll be putting one on eBay when I get the time.

AV Receiver: Yamaha RX-V1800

The next important new piece of kit was a new receiver capable of upscaling everything to 1080P.  After checking out a few reviews I went for the Yamaha RX-V1800, even though it didn’t come out top in the reviews.  Why?  Well, even though it didn’t deliver the best audio quality it was slightly cheaper than the alternatives, that also had heat problems and clunky user interfaces.

The Yamaha has been an absolute joy from day one.  Apart from one problem with setting up the subwoofer (I overruled the automatic setting with the recommended speaker setting, which wiped out all my sub bass), it’s been a doddle to use thanks to YPAO Automatic System Calibration.  With YPAO you just attach the included mic and position it near your usual listening position.  The Yamaha then plays a number of test tones from each speaker to measure room acoustics, speaker quality and distances and makes all the necessary adjustments.  It couldn’t be more simple, and I’ve hardly touched a setting since.

The receiver also has enough inputs for everything you can think of, so I only have one HDMI cable going from my receiver to my TV, with everything sources pumping out/upscaled to 1080P.

Speakers: SVS 6.1 system (3xSCS-01, 3xSBS-01 + 25-31 PCi subwoofer)

I’ve always wanted a good set of speakers but I’ve never lived in a place big enough to accommodate them until now.  I set myself a £1k budget to buy a 6.1 system (my room layout makes 7.1 difficult).  After doing my research it became clear that the best system available for under £1k was a SVS system.  I’d never heard of SVS before, but every review I found gave a glowing recommendation.

After contacting a dealer they recommended that because of the size of my room I needed a bigger subwoofer, so I upgraded to a SVS 25-31 PCi subwoofer.  This sub is an absolute beast and is nearly 3ft tall, but luckily I’ve hidden it out of sight behind my TV.  There’s no hiding the bass though which is simply immense.  I’ve never heard anything like it, and it makes my previous sub look like a tweeter.  The sound isn’t overpowering, just deep and warm.

I also upgraded my speakers, adding replacing the front SBS-01 speakers with the better SCS-01s, so that the front is all SCS-01s and the back SBS-01s.  The mistake I made was paying a premium for the extra SBS-01 as to get my 6.1 system I had to break up a pair of speakers.  What I should have done is taken the pair and put the spare speaker in storage, as in the future I might be able to accommodate it

Stands: Atacama nexus speaker stands, Atacama Elara 64 AV Unit

The Panasonic 65″ TV is a real beast at 95KG, and finding a stand strong enough to take the weight which was also wide enough was a major challenge.  Eventually I found the Atacama Elara 64 AV unit.  It’s not very pretty, but it does the job well enough and has very good ventilation.

My speakers are on standard Atacama Nexus speaker stands which seem to do a decent job.

PC: Thermaltake Mozart VC4001 Chassis, 4200+, DFI Lanparty, HD 3870 XT 512MB, Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 soundcard

My PC is essentially my old main PC in a new chassis.  I went for the Mozart case as it was one of the few HTPC cases that could take a socket 939 motherboard.  It has turned out to be an inspired choice as the built in IR receiver means I can control it from my Harmony remote, including turning it on and off.

The HD 3870 is more powerful than I need, but I wanted a card that runs quiet rather than sounding like a jet plane taking off.  I opted for the Auzen Prelude card because Auzen are going to launch a HDMI extender for it, that will allow it to support HDMI 1.3 as well as HD sound formats like Dolby TrueHD.