How do you shop for a hometheater installer ? - Page 3

^If you are going to spend megabucks on B&W 800 series, then get a Wilson system with Sophia 2s and the center channel. They are, in my opinion, far more musical. Runco is great stuff but my understanding is that you can get close to the video quality for much less as well. That may help the cost equation a bit.

Are you going to be watching blu-rays most of the time? Cause if so, the benefits of an anamorphic lens and sled for it are minimal b/c there are no anamorphic Blu-rays. It's not in the spec so afaik, you'll never see anamorphic blu-rays. Anamorphic DVDs squeezed the widescreen format into your standard frame so that the full resolution of the format could be used. It required an anamorphic lens to reverse the operation for most projectors. They bothered with it on DVDs because the resolution was so low, but with 1080p, they said "why bother?" Nobody except a niche within a niche care. If the runco comes with an anamorphic lens and a motorized sled for it, then that is what the extra cost is vs. a JVC. The projector itself is lower performance than JVC's top models. I would get a JVC and not even worry about it. As I said before it's got superior native contrast, the best blacks in the industry, and very good color accuracy. If this is mainly for movies and you don't intend to listen to music in the room, the B&W 800 series are probably overkill. I would definitely not spend 802D money (I'm assuming he recommended these based on what you're spending overall) for a pure HT system. 803Ds might be more reasonable. You could also look at paradigm signature S8s for even less money. If you are doing an accoustically transparent screen, you could place 3 S8s across the front and use the ADPs or S2 or S4s for the surrounds. I'd say maybe ADPs on side walls and S2 or S4s at the rear. Center channel speakers are a compromise because they usually have to go above or below a screen. If you can place them behind a screen, you can get a matching full-range tower to have a seamless and perfectly timber matched front sound stage. You know this already, but by going with an installer, he's going to push the products he has.

For the speakers, I like Vandersteen 5a for the fronts. Wow!