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Phone calls to the
other installers and talks with our dealers
finally came to fruition as the Sony SXRD 2020
series became available at a very tempting
price. After a number of visits to dealer
partners and conversing with the rest of the
team on tweaks and settings. I made the
plunge and brought one in for a battery of
tests. After setting up so many
screen/projector configurations and playing with
so many devices, this project was becoming more
involved than I had envisioned. 8 months,
over half a dozen display products and I didn't
even have my speakers set up!
Well, thankfully
the search ended there. After a week of
tweaking, calibrating and playing with the
layout of the room, I finally arrived at a
solution that was satisfactory to our space and
activity needs as well as the performance
benchmark which I was looking for. It's
not the best, but given the smaller size of the
screen, it is more than enough for the area I've
got the screen setup in.
Due to the length
of the display decision, the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD
format war managed to settle itself and it
became an easy choice to adopt Blu. The
PlayStation 3 (PS3) was an easy choice as well.
It offered the best responsiveness, quickest
load times, flexibility for future updates and
most importantly, video games in high
definition.
Digital delivery
and accessibility has been something we've
brought to our customers and continue to develop
and refine. Unity is a large part of that
and it is something which makes it convenient
for myself or my girlfriend to queue up and
enjoy our favourite movies, music and TV shows
as well as share photos with family and friends.
The particular system I deployed involves a
central server tucked away in the home office
operating with the latest Intel Quad Core Q9550
processor and almost 16 terabytes of media
storage. The LG Multi-blu disc drive also
allows me to view both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, a
flexibility I wanted thanks in part to the
UNITY's ability to archive the new high
definition disc formats. Data is delivered
via a high speed router to a dual-core extender
and internally scaled by the multimedia friendly
ATI 4770 video card. Sound is delivered
digitally from the extender to the receiver via
ASUS brand spanking new HDMI 1.3 capable sound
card.
Audio was the next
aspect to be challenged.
Completing the experience of any
entertainment center, I knew it would be a
crucial choice but also a very personal one.
Posing the question "what's your
favourite speaker" to a room full of installers
and I don't think I got one duplicate response.
Well, auditioning it is!
After 7 years of
active duty, my trusty Sony 7ES 7.1 receiver was
due for retirement. Even given its age, it
still delivered exceptional dynamics, good clean
sound and with the exception of HDMI, which
wasn't available at the time, still offers
connectivity options for all my legacy devices
such as GameCube, Wii, Xbox and CD changer.
An upgrade was in order for me to stay current
with the advances in the audio technology.
It was a
bit of a sad day pulling this receiver out of
theatre duty, but it'll be happy in it's new
home in the next room over as my office
2-channel receiver.
In searching for
the new unit, the guidelines were lots of
dynamic headroom (more power!!), a warm and
natural sound, plus expandability options to
accommodate additional hardware.
Marantz and Denon offered a number of
solutions and after continuous tinkering and
experimenting at the office, I settled on the
Marantz SR7002.
Supporting the latest high-resolution
audio formats, 4 HDMI inputs and THX
certification, it certainly ticked all the right
boxes and while not hyper-high end, it's a
respected piece that will do more than enough
damage given the room it's being put in.
Complementing the
new receiver is a new set of JBL ES speakers.
The ES90 towers anchor the front of the system
and offer a number of sonic strengths that are
JBL hallmarks: clean and detailed sound, with
plenty of tight bass, a clear midrange and
extended high frequencies, all the more so
thanks to the UHF (ultra
high frequency) driver that has found its
way into a number of JBL designs in recent
years. Imaging is extremely good and the speaker
delivers the sense of presence and scale that
large floor-standing speakers excel at
delivering. The tonal balance is slightly on the
brighter and more forward side of neutral - not
glaring or bright, but the ES90 is certainly not
overly bloated or sluggish-sounding.
More than enough head room to grow into
and big, full sound to enjoy movies and music
with.
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