Home Theater catch-all

Vizio has a couple models of 5.1 with wireless sub. Pretty good reviews on Amazon

TheGameguru wrote:

Genius tech help

This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for. As always, GG to the rescue.

Now to do some amazon shopping.

Anyone want to toss out recommendations for a sound bar/sub they like?

Ok I’m cross posting from the Xbox thread.

About a year ago I had a home theater company update all my stuff. We have a room for our home theater with surround sound speakers built in and the house has built in speakers throughout. My jury rigged setup was pretty sad and I am not tech savvy so I told them I wanted a good home theater setup and Sonos to run all of the speakers. I told them to just pick the best components that they’d recommend and also had them run wired internet connections to my 3 consoles. It was expensive but so great when they were done. I did not pay any attention to what stuff they installed.

Fast forward to now and I’m excited to get my new Xbox One X plugged in. As described elsewhere I cant get 4K and HDR working through my receiver setup.

The reason I’m posting is that I’ve now discovered that he fancy controller and remote they installed can only be programmed by them. I’d like to just bypass the receiver and go straight from Xbox to TV and optical to receiver for sound but I’d have to have them come out to reprogram the remote. That feels crazy.

This is my remote:
http://procontrol.com/products/pro24-r/

Do you think I should just chuck it and go get a universal at Best Buy? It is pretty sweet, especially the touch screen, but seems silly to require a House call any time Inhook up something new.

Fast

Docjoe wrote:

Ok I’m cross posting from the Xbox thread.

About a year ago I had a home theater company update all my stuff. We have a room for our home theater with surround sound speakers built in and the house has built in speakers throughout. My jury rigged setup was pretty sad and I am not tech savvy so I told them I wanted a good home theater setup and Sonos to run all of the speakers. I told them to just pick the best components that they’d recommend and also had them run wired internet connections to my 3 consoles. It was expensive but so great when they were done. I did not pay any attention to what stuff they installed.

Fast forward to now and I’m excited to get my new Xbox One X plugged in. As described elsewhere I cant get 4K and HDR working through my receiver setup.

The reason I’m posting is that I’ve now discovered that he fancy controller and remote they installed can only be programmed by them. I’d like to just bypass the receiver and go straight from Xbox to TV and optical to receiver for sound but I’d have to have them come out to reprogram the remote. That feels crazy.

This is my remote:
http://procontrol.com/products/pro24-r/

Do you think I should just chuck it and go get a universal at Best Buy? It is pretty sweet, especially the touch screen, but seems silly to require a House call any time Inhook up something new.

Fast

Yeah you can get a decent Logitech universal remote that will do what you need. They have more expensive ones with touchscreens if you like, too.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Docjoe wrote:

Ok I’m cross posting from the Xbox thread.

About a year ago I had a home theater company update all my stuff. We have a room for our home theater with surround sound speakers built in and the house has built in speakers throughout. My jury rigged setup was pretty sad and I am not tech savvy so I told them I wanted a good home theater setup and Sonos to run all of the speakers. I told them to just pick the best components that they’d recommend and also had them run wired internet connections to my 3 consoles. It was expensive but so great when they were done. I did not pay any attention to what stuff they installed.

Fast forward to now and I’m excited to get my new Xbox One X plugged in. As described elsewhere I cant get 4K and HDR working through my receiver setup.

The reason I’m posting is that I’ve now discovered that he fancy controller and remote they installed can only be programmed by them. I’d like to just bypass the receiver and go straight from Xbox to TV and optical to receiver for sound but I’d have to have them come out to reprogram the remote. That feels crazy.

This is my remote:
http://procontrol.com/products/pro24-r/

Do you think I should just chuck it and go get a universal at Best Buy? It is pretty sweet, especially the touch screen, but seems silly to require a House call any time Inhook up something new.

Fast

Yeah you can get a decent Logitech universal remote that will do what you need. They have more expensive ones with touchscreens if you like, too.

The Logitech harmony's are relatively easy to program too because you do it all in an app then sync it to the remote. All you need is the model numbers of your devices and the app walks you through the rest.

Shameless employer plug, but Sonos makes two options for soundbar, and the sub is wireless. Later, if you want to add rear surrounds, those are wireless too. Definitely not cheap, but they sound pretty damn good. You can also use them to wirelessly stream music as a bonus. If you decide you're interested, PM me, and I can hook you up with a discount code.

I'll second that recommendation.

Sonos devices are not cheap but god I love mine. They sound orders of magnitude better than your average alexa/google/whatever thingy, and can do all the pandora/etc. streaming stuff on top of it.

We have a whole-house amp with a couple of the Sonos devices hooked up to it, plus the soundbar, and nothing is cooler than taking the audio coming out of the TV and playing it all through the house.

I will third that.. I have a surround setup in my basement.. Sonos Playbase, Sonos Sub and two Sonos Play 1's. It does a pretty good job of surround sound from the Xbox One X as well as the PS4 Pro.

In my Family Room I have a Sonos Playbar and Sonos Sub and even those two standalone do a really nice job simulating a full surround setup without any wires or fuss.

I have 4 more Play 1's scattered throughout the house and having a whole home of audio without any real complicated setups is glorious. The Alexa integration is barebones but kinda works. (it's better than nothing)

See? It's great, and I got discount codes!

Alexa integration is still actively being worked on, so it'll continue to improve. We should have Spotify integration in soon, and Google Assistant support is hopefully being added next year.

My only beef is lack of DTS support.. I see other 2.1 solutions support DTS as well as DD for surround sound I wish Sonos would as well.

Chaz wrote:

See? It's great, and I got discount codes!

Alexa integration is still actively being worked on, so it'll continue to improve. We should have Spotify integration in soon, and Google Assistant support is hopefully being added next year.

PM Sent, I love me some discounts.

Is the current state of 4K projectors still dismal? I have a 1080p and would love a reason to build a new HTPC/Console for 4K and HDR gamine but it seems like the market is still really young.

ratzofftoya wrote:

Is the current state of 4K projectors still dismal? I have a 1080p and would love a reason to build a new HTPC/Console for 4K and HDR gamine but it seems like the market is still really young.

Depends entirely on what you're willing to pay.

If you can afford to just throw money at it there's excellent 4k laser projectors already that are kind of amazing but I think the cheapest genuinely good ones are still above $7000.

I do like my Epson 5040ub quite a lot, but it's a native 1080p projector that accepts 4k signals and uses fancy tricks to increase perceived picture resolution. It's an excellent effect that I have yet to be able to find a flaw with and some projector enthusiasts have side-by-sided it with native 4k projectors and said that it was at times difficult to tell the difference, but even so, it's still "Faux-K" as some have taken to calling it. No argument here.

I'm extremely impressed with the Epson for movies though, so will probably stick with it for a lamp replacement or two. By that time laser projectors should basically have become the standard and I should be able to get a big improvement in picture quality for less than I even paid for the Epson.

I believe the Epson has great input lag too. Doesn't it have a bandwidth limitation on 4k HDR at 60fps?

Thin_J wrote:
ratzofftoya wrote:

Is the current state of 4K projectors still dismal? I have a 1080p and would love a reason to build a new HTPC/Console for 4K and HDR gamine but it seems like the market is still really young.

Depends entirely on what you're willing to pay.

If you can afford to just throw money at it there's excellent 4k laser projectors already that are kind of amazing but I think the cheapest genuinely good ones are still above $7000.

I do like my Epson 5040ub quite a lot, but it's a native 1080p projector that accepts 4k signals and uses fancy tricks to increase perceived picture resolution. It's an excellent effect that I have yet to be able to find a flaw with and some projector enthusiasts have side-by-sided it with native 4k projectors and said that it was at times difficult to tell the difference, but even so, it's still "Faux-K" as some have taken to calling it. No argument here.

I'm extremely impressed with the Epson for movies though, so will probably stick with it for a lamp replacement or two. By that time laser projectors should basically have become the standard and I should be able to get a big improvement in picture quality for less than I even paid for the Epson.

That doesn't sound so bad--I guess the follow-up is whether it is worth going to the Epson from my BenQ 1070W (native 1080P).

As an aside, since you seen very knowledgeable about this, have you heard anything about either of the two affordable 4K projectors available now:
https://www.amazon.com/Optoma-UHD60-...

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-H7850-De...

This seems interesting, too: https://www.projectorreviews.com/art...

So I can't be helpful on any DLP based projectors because the rainbow effect sticks out like a sore thumb to me and I just can't deal with it. It drives me crazy.

Many, many people just don't see the rainbow effect, and I am supremely jealous of them because other than this one thing DLP projectors are great and they offer a ton of options... but I'm not lucky that way.

If you aren't familiar with the effect one thing to be aware of if you look for Youtube videos of it is that cameras, because of the way they capture, will magnify the effect to a truly huge degree. It absolutely does not look like that even if you do see it in person. It's much more subtle. I saw it a lot more on brighter objects moving smoothly but moderately quickly across darker backgrounds, and always at the back trailing edge of whatever the moving object was.

If you already have a DLP projector and don't see the rainbow effect then you're golden and have way way way more options to look at on the projector market than I do.

Thin_J wrote:

So I can't be helpful on any DLP based projectors because the rainbow effect sticks out like a sore thumb to me and I just can't deal with it. It drives me crazy.

Many, many people just don't see the rainbow effect, and I am supremely jealous of them because other than this one thing DLP projectors are great and they offer a ton of options... but I'm not lucky that way.

If you aren't familiar with the effect one thing to be aware of if you look for Youtube videos of it is that cameras, because of the way they capture, will magnify the effect to a truly huge degree. It absolutely does not look like that even if you do see it in person. It's much more subtle. I saw it a lot more on brighter objects moving smoothly but moderately quickly across darker backgrounds, and always at the back trailing edge of whatever the moving object was.

If you already have a DLP projector and don't see the rainbow effect then you're golden and have way way way more options to look at on the projector market than I do.

Haha, these YouTube videos are nuts! I totally don't see it on my DLP at home but in these videos, it's a nightmare!

Thanks for the info ThinJ. Our new home which we purchased last hear has a complete finished basement. Its actually perfect for a home theatre. Pitch black with the lights off.

My wife is actually ok with getting a projector down there. Its going to cost a pretty penny so I want it future proof for a few years. I guess the 4K HDR projectors aren’t quite there yet?

Balthezor wrote:

Thanks for the info ThinJ. Our new home which we purchased last hear has a complete finished basement. Its actually perfect for a home theatre. Pitch black with the lights off.

My wife is actually ok with getting a projector down there. Its going to cost a pretty penny so I want it future proof for a few years. I guess the 4K HDR projectors aren’t quite there yet?

There's a fair number of really good 4k native projectors that do HDR well. You just have to do as much research as possible to figure out what you want.

I ended up where I did for two reasons. One is that the best 4k native options in my price range were all DLP projectors and I can't deal with the aforementioned rainbow effect.

The second is I got a great deal on the Epson. I got hundreds of dollars off and managed to spend notably less than I'd set aside.

Just figure out your budget and start digging into reviews at places like ProjectorReviews or AVSForum or wherever else.

Thoughts on JVC RS 540 or 640 projectors?

I believe they're both like my Epson in that they're technically 1080p projectors that accept and use tricks to display 4k images.

Also the 640 is apparently $8000, which is stupid and puts you into full 4k native laser projector territory.

I get the appeal of a 100+" screen but $8K puts you into the 77" OLED screen price range and no way would I pass up that quality of picture for some projector.

TheGameguru wrote:

I get the appeal of a 100+" screen but $8K puts you into the 77" OLED screen price range and no way would I pass up that quality of picture for some projector.

Yes... but that's one specific overpriced model.

The Optoma UHZ65 is a full 4k DLP Laser Projector for $4500. 3000 Lumen, full 4k/60 and HDR support.

The Sony VPL-VW285ES is a full 4k projector at $5000 and is one of the most often recommended as one of the best overall 4k projectors around.

That's just two I got from a quick google.

And while yes, my Epson projector does not match the contrast ratio on my 55 inch OLED... it's over double the screen size at 120 inches. Even if the OLED was 77 inches... I'd still have trouble going back to it for watching movies. It just isn't a comparable experience.

I will be in the market sometime next summer, but I wanted to go ahead and start hitting up people for recommendations when it comes to projectors. This will be in basement with black out curtains and any ambient light will be minimal. Are there any sub $2k projectors worth recommending?

cartoonin wrote:

I will be in the market sometime next summer, but I wanted to go ahead and start hitting up people for recommendations when it comes to projectors. This will be in basement with black out curtains and any ambient light will be minimal. Are there any sub $2k projectors worth recommending?

If 1080p is ok, look at the Sony VPL-HW45ES.

cartoonin wrote:

I will be in the market sometime next summer, but I wanted to go ahead and start hitting up people for recommendations when it comes to projectors. This will be in basement with black out curtains and any ambient light will be minimal. Are there any sub $2k projectors worth recommending?

Projector Central has a pretty good list of the best overall units in the sub $3000 price range. You can pick through that and get what will likely be your best options.

Thanks guys! I appreciate the info.

Thin_J wrote:
ratzofftoya wrote:

Is the current state of 4K projectors still dismal? I have a 1080p and would love a reason to build a new HTPC/Console for 4K and HDR gamine but it seems like the market is still really young.

Depends entirely on what you're willing to pay.

If you can afford to just throw money at it there's excellent 4k laser projectors already that are kind of amazing but I think the cheapest genuinely good ones are still above $7000.

I do like my Epson 5040ub quite a lot, but it's a native 1080p projector that accepts 4k signals and uses fancy tricks to increase perceived picture resolution. It's an excellent effect that I have yet to be able to find a flaw with and some projector enthusiasts have side-by-sided it with native 4k projectors and said that it was at times difficult to tell the difference, but even so, it's still "Faux-K" as some have taken to calling it. No argument here.

I'm extremely impressed with the Epson for movies though, so will probably stick with it for a lamp replacement or two. By that time laser projectors should basically have become the standard and I should be able to get a big improvement in picture quality for less than I even paid for the Epson.

Which laser projector is this with that price?

Man I don't know. I didn't pay a ton of attention because, you know, not my segment of the market. It did exist, but I'm not finding anything on google right now that isn't native 1080p. Maybe it was a black friday sale or something.

If you're looking in that range though and setting up a dedicated home theater room everyone on earth that spends time researching projectors is going to tell you to buy the best current Sony model you can afford and forget everything else.

Haha thanks anyways. Those AV forums are very confusing