[moes_girl]

We are buying a home cinema kit in January and have decided now between the 2 kits below, does anyone have any opinions or advice on the following kits. Which is the better make Pioneer or Sony? I think the sony kit is a pre-order so not too many reviews but would appreciate advice from anyone who has owned a sony kit. thanks

We have a sony multi-region dvd player if that matters.

Pioneer DCS-360


Sony HDMI HT-SF1000

[KevD]

I'm a big Pioneer fan, my DVD & AMP are both Pioneer and the quality from them are Excellent! However there seems to a very long and favourable thread for the Sony over a AVForums, and I remember from days working in Dixons the Sonys were always the top performers in these All In One set ups.

The benifit of the HDMI inputs aswell as the outputs, allowing PS3 and Sky HD to be run through via HDMI, would be a clicnher for me

[moes_girl]

Originally Posted by KevD

I'm a big Pioneer fan, my DVD & AMP are both Pioneer and the quality from them are Excellent! However there seems to a very long and favourable thread for the Sony over a AVForums, and I remember from days working in Dixons the Sonys were always the top performers in these All In One set ups.

The hubbie is leaning towards the sony receiver and speakers because our dvd player is sony but I prefer the pioneer. thanks for the link will check it out.

Originally Posted by KevD

The benifit of the HDMI inputs aswell as the outputs, allowing PS3 and Sky HD to be run through via HDMI, would be a clicnher for me

Can you run an xbox through the receiver? cheers

[piggygm]

a few years ago i would have stayed well away from Sony not because they were totally rubbish i just found them all bass i think that was true of a lot of Sony audio and they were brutes big ugly looking things...i know it should not matter what it looks like as long as it delivers

anyway there i go waffle waffle i heard a new Sony set up don't ask the model but it was a friend of a friend and he was showing of his new 42" LCD so we stuck the dts battle scene from private Ryan and i was blown away the sound was crisp clear and bloody brilliant so much so i started looking into changing mine unfortunately my wife found out and kind hinted no

so i can only say if i was buying a new one it would be the Sony......and i have a Pioneer now

[KevD]

Originally Posted by moes_girl

Can you run an xbox through the receiver? cheers

For the Audio, of course throught the optical input. There is no video input through the system for the Xbox's Component/VGA connection.

The Video inputs will be more useful when/if you get a HDTV, if the TV you get only has one HDMI you can plug both say a PS3 and SkyHD/HD Cable through to the one socket. The Xbox could then just plug straight into the TVs component socket.

[homerpovey]

A question for you KevD (or anyone else for that matter :grin:) I'm sure the PS3 use HDMI 1.3? How will that affect standard HDMI connections on TVs etc.?

[KevD]

Originally Posted by homerpovey

A question for you KevD (or anyone else for that matter :grin:) I'm sure the PS3 use HDMI 1.3? How will that affect standard HDMI connections on TVs etc.?

Yeap, the PS3 will be the first thing that we see that has the 1.3 standard. From the HDMI 1.3 Press Release @ HDMO.org:

Products implementing the new HDMI specification will continue to be backward compatible with earlier HDMI products.

I imagine though, you will not get the full potential of a 1.3 device unless being used with another 1.3 device as the non 1.3 device could not process all the extra bandwidth.

[homerpovey]

Ok. So it should still work but you won't get the full monty performance, so to speak. Cheers.

[KevD]

This is how I see it, but by no means am I the authority on the matter :P

[InspectorC]

A friend of mine got one of those sony home theatres, it's called 9000 I think. And it has great sound. But I've heard that the operation of making these expensive kits region free, is quite complicated. Me and my buddy did try, but the explanation was on several pages, so we chickened out. It's more risky doing this on a rack, cause an error my damage the whole kit instead of just the dvd player since it's all connected. But maybe that has changed. And maybe you don't need a region free player :grin: