Page 1 of Help needed with set-up

Finally convinced a mate to part with his hard earned on a complete system. Thing is he wants me to help him set it up and I haven`t really got a clue. (My set ups more simple DVD+TV) His set up will be:

28" Tosh TV (2 Scarts)
Tosh Nicam Video (2 Scarts)
Pioneer DV 535
Kenwood 5030 Amp
Eltaxx Moviemaxx Speakers
Sky Digibox (Pace)

Can anyone give me a rundown on how to connect it all and the best (reasonably priced) cables to use. Cheers

Hi. As this took me ages to type out on 10th Jan have a looksee at this little lot :

http://www.dvd.reviewer.co.uk/forums/thread.asp?Forum=211&Thread=17542 (second posting)

You can connect the DVD player to the Kenwood by either a coaxial or an optical digital cable (£20 from Richer). Go for some half decent speaker cable as well : I use Gale XL189 from Richer (£1.99 a metre if I remember correctly : served me very well for four years), which is fine for a budget amp/speaker system. You also need to run normal phono-phono plugs from the VCR, the TV and the digibox to the amplifier.

Can you let me know how the Moviemaxx package sounds - I`m thinking of going for that £120 bargain (2 floorstander fronts, 2 stand mounted rears and a centre speaker) from Richer too !

Cheers for the help Clayts. Went round last night and set it all up.
As I expected my mate had upgraded all the components from the Richer add in What Hi-Fi, his final set up was:

Toshiba Sd 100e (MR)
Sherwood 6095 Amp
Eltaxx 6.2 Fronts
Eltaxx Moniter 3 Rears
Eltaxx Centre.

Sounds amazing. Probably not up there with the high end stuff but for the price very impressive. Asked about the Moviemaxx stuff but the Richers bloke suggested they might be a bit crap. Probably just trying to get him to spend more but decided to steer clear. The Schneiders got a brilliant review in Home Cinema Choice at around £130 so they might be an alternative.

Anyway, thanks again for all your help.

Cheers,

Luis Guzman

You`re more than welcome, Luis - I trust it all worked okay !

Interesting what you say about the Moviemaxx package. I actually e-mailed Eltax about it, asking them what was in it, speaker ratings, impedance ratings and other such stuff and all I got was a load of Danish guff about it "being a speaker system for the home cinema" and, er, that`s it...I think your mate was right to take the package Richer offered him, actually, and all those lovely speakers for about £200, am I right ?

Wish your mate well - tho` I suspect he won`t be out for a few weeks !!!

Hi hope you dont mind me joining in but I was looking at that amp and speaker combo from richer sounds too. Did your mate like the setup? How good does it sound with Audio CD`s ?

cheers for any advice

Andy

Clayts - the DVD + Amp + Speakers came to £480. All upgrades from the March What hi-fi offer. Originally Logix DVD, Kenwood DD only amp and those Moviemaxx speakers were £280, so £200 for all the upgrades is not bad.
Think he will disappear for a while now as hes already built up a decent collection.

Pasty Man - hes not really using it for CDs (the Tosh doesn`t play CD-rs or Rws) so I`m not sure. All I can say is it sounded great with The Thing, Seven SE and Platoon. Even the lion roaring for MGM was impressive. Check out the Schneiders reviewed in HomeCinemaChoice for real budget bargains but my advice would be to give Richers a ring, take your favourite CDs and audition a few systems. The amp is great and for the price I would definitely recommend. Checked out the Kenwood 5030 (no Dts) and 7030 (really aggressive sound - a bit to much so) and the Sherwood came out top. The Radios really good as well if you use it.

Good luck with your shopping.

Luis G

Clayts,

You seem to be in the know. I have a S-Video (the funny little PS/2 style socket i.e. PC mouse/keyboard) on my TV which is AV3(S), would this link provide a better picture quality from a DVD player than the RGB via Scart?

I only ask because your setup with the digiBox,VCR,DVD,amp... seemed highly complicated and I thought I could save myself some of the hassle and clutter.

I`m not as technically clued up as Clayts, but S-Video is regarded as giving the best DVD picture. In S-Video the signal is split up into the seperate colours and also contains luminous information for each colour.

The best to worst for picture quality is:

1. S-Video
2. SCART (RGB)
3. SCART (COMPOSITE)
4. RF (Via a Video)

NiVZ.

Alright then cheers for that. So could I still link my DVD to my Video via Scart if I could disable the macrovision as well as running it to my TV via the S-Video? Or is that the most stupid question ever?

RGB tends to give a better picture than SVideo in my opinion (having been in a similar situation, and tried both).. It does depend on your TV (as some don`t cope well with one or the other).