At the risk of complicating matters, while what I said about turning your sub pre-out off for music is technically true and the proper way to set up your system, in practice it may or may not be a major issue. If you try leaving it on while crossing over the 170SE surrounds only, and this turns out not to be a noticeable problem with music that has relatively aggressive surrounds, then maybe it would be OK for your specific setup. Anomalies would be more pronounced with your current 340SEs than they would be with Sierra-1s, if anything, so any tests you may decide to do now will be valid. A lot depends on how your sub is integrated, of course.Originally Posted by Grayson73
Sigh...I'm still waiting for the format war to end, myself --I haven't added to my movie collection in I don't know how long.Originally Posted by Grayson73
Well, the formats are virtually equivalent in technical capability, with the only significant difference being the larger storage capacity of Blu-ray. The question for me is which of the two will the market decide to keep around--which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with capability--assuming they both don't end up battling one another indefinitely within a niche market. Blu-ray stumbled out of the gate very badly (nice going, Sony), but appears to have taken the lead for the time being.Originally Posted by dallas
Electronics of this sort tend to peak around the third generation, give or take, in terms of both quality and features for a reasonable price. After that point, the market will begin to separate into capable but relatively expensive units and cheap crap.Originally Posted by dallas
With regard to codecs, specifically Dolby TrueHD would be nice to have, whether it's in the player or receiver (preferably the latter--I don't care for any silly things the player might want to mix in, just give me the soundtrack unmolested!).
Software is a major factor, as well as cost, as you've pointed out, but these factors are quite fluid. Who knows, perhaps the deciding factor will turn out to be the name "Blu-ray" if consumers like how it sounds and believe that having such a different name means that they're getting something different and better; conversely, "HD-DVD" seems more familiar, which may inspire more confidence in other people. I really have no idea what will happen--whatever. Thanks a lot, Hollywood.Originally Posted by dallas