New HT System

[Hal]

I am back in the home theatre mood again and would like to put together a basic system. I thought about purchasing for an A/V Receiver the Yamaha RX-V465BL and for the Blue-Ray Player the Samsung BD-P1600/

What do you think?

I own a pair of Boston Acoustics VR-950 floor standing speakers that have served me well over the years. But what to supplement them with for a center speaker and rear speakers for a modest price?

Finally, does it make sense to purchase a Blue-Ray player or is downloading films from online sources the next wave?

Thanks for your assistance.

[Mr Peabody]

Boy, you know how to open a can of worms :) I'm referring to the download vs BD question. There's been many a hot discussions on that around here. Any way I feel it's good to have a disc player, downloading of HD content isn't up to speed yet. You can upgrade to one of the Samsung that offer streaming and be ready for both.

The 465 looks to be a good receiver with some nice features for music as well. There's the direct mode which bypasses the receiver's internal processing for a more pure signal path for analog music playback and the 465 has preamp outputs in case you want to add an external amp down the road. It also looks to have all the home theater features you'd use.

I'd recommend contacting Boston to see if anything in the current line will come close to voice matching your speakers. If not, you can get the closest recommendation from them and suffer any difference or buy all new. Unless you are very picky, like me, you may not be bothered by any difference in timbre of the center and older mains.