Be Excellent To Each Other

Much googling of the above subject has only resulted in shattered dreams and confusion.
I want an Thing that I can plug my ps4 optical, TV red and white things and mp3 player size headphone jack into. Amongst other things. I looked at pioneer shs100 (possibly) but can't figure out if that's the right thing or not. £100 to £150 price bracket 5.1 with small satellite speakers required as I already have hooks high up on the walls for these to hang on. Any thoughts or suggestions (relevant to the subject .) most welcome. Thks k bi.

It would appear that the Pioneer S-HS100 only has a single 3.5mm (headphone) input. Which is a bit shit, but £99 isn't a lot of money, so you can't expect too much.

I used to have a Pure Acoustics set that could do all that. Going back a bit now, mind

£100 - £150 seems like an "odd" price bracket, as far as the manufacturers are concerned. There's just hardly anything there for that price.

I think I quite want something like this. The TV has optical audio out or some such and I think the ps4 does as well. Ideally, I want some wireless rechargeable bluetooth speakers on the walls and use something to send the sound from the tv, ps4 and cd player to them. And a subwoofer. For about a ton.

If the TV has optical out then you don't need to plug the PS4's optical connection in as well.

To be clear - you want rechargeable surround sound speakers? Do you hate yourself?

It wasn't Pure Acoustics I had, it was Acoustic Solutions and I still have it. It has optical, co-ax and analogue. It wasn't half bad for the price. I'm pretty sure the company disappeared a few years back though. You might want to look into a low end AV receiver and get a set of speakers separately. Richer Sounds have a 5.0 set for the princely sum of £19.95!

I dislike wiring but I suppose I could run a spur from a light fitting and make a step down transformer.

Good news on the inputs.

Or you could run speaker cables to them and not have them be wireless.

Or bury the wires in the plaster of the walls. You *may* have to redecorate, however.

I suppose if I have to run cables.....

For that budget, I'd try and pick up a second hand decent AV amp and speakers - it'll perform much better than anything new.

You've met my wife, right? You know my standards are "paint is on walls, job done, off to the pub to avoid noxious fumes" and hers are a bit higher. Imagine that with plastering.

But it's not really plastering. It's not much more than filling. You channel out the plaster to no more than about half an inch, if you're just running speaker cable.

Of course, fancy trunking that looks like skirting boards does exist too, but we don't care about that, do we boys?

Par example: http://www.d-line-it.co.uk/products/pro ... wire-cover

I don't do delite. I can probably do "circular saw blade" width.

Stupid phone. How do I turn the word changing off?

Wasn't happy with the Pioneer I bought in May so changed it for a networked Yamaha receiver which I love (£230 from Richer Sounds I think) all sources in via HDMI (but has two optical) and out through HDMI to Telly. Nice having my iPhone as a wireless source for it.

What does having it connected to the network do?

AirPlay and net radio for me. Nice when there's folk round and they want to play tunes from their phones.

Oh and if the kids get up before me and have Netflix on too loud I can turn it down from upstairs

So is this a Thing or a Thing with Speakers? I might be tempted into a higher price bracket if sufficiently cajoled.

It's a Thing.

AV amp may have been the thing I should have been looking for without knowing. I'll look again...

Ah, no squeakers. If i used my existing 30squid squeakers would that be a bad idea?

I don't know where you are, but this is a bargain if you can collect
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mission-5-1-s ... SwAYtWI~cQ

And this would also probably do you nicely - they will post this one.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Yamaha-HTR-30 ... Swo0JWGSS9

Any speakers will work. Ideally you want two larger ones for front left and right and three smaller ones for centre and rear left and right. Much better still with a powered sub but that can be added later.

Oh yeah, my Yamaha (RX -V477) comes with a mic that you place where you'd normally sit and it sets all the speaker levels for you. Nice.

Zoidbergs bargains are bargains. If they don't ramp up too much!

Another nice receiver to keep your eye on: http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/221926754940

Oooh, good spot

Awesome got those on watch, particularly liking the Yamaha. Grim... Regards Your suggestion earlier that I should run sound through the telly; I don't want to because my old LG telly has a horrible delay through its speakers and through its outputs.

The Mission speakers are probably a lot better than the amp they are being sold with. The Yamaha is probably the other way round.

There's a lot of used AV bargains out there as people have been upgrading to HDMI switching amps.

They are very sexy but too far away, I live in rural Scotland but also because it's pretty here. Always a trade off...

Sonos all the things.

Sonos surround is about £1100 all in, isn't it?

Could I bluetooth 5.1 from the tv through a soundbar?

Does your TV do Bluetooth out?

If so, this might be a good shout: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00J6F3I5E

I don't think so. It has HD optical out I will look to tomorrow and see what the boss says

You never know, I guess.

You might be able to get an adaptor for it if it doesn't.

Going for the Yamaha setup tommorow when it finishes, none of you others bid on it k?

This quote has had me thinking.

I currently have a surround sound receiver/speaker set up. At the moment my Xbox has an optical out which is plugged into the amp. All my other consoles go through my TV speakers but... Does Grims comment suggest that I can take the optical out of my TV into my amp and still get surround sound? My Xbox is connected via HDMI.

If your TV has an optical out, it very likely will pass at least stereo pcm through to the amp from an analogue source. Why not try? Pump hdmi audio from your xbox through the TV, optical out to the amp and see what occurs. Then try a scart or similar

That how my setup works; everything's HDMI'd into the TV then a single optical out to the surround sound system. It works fine and I like it for it's simplicity.

Both of mine are done the same - the TV is essentially a large monitor with just a single HDMI input in use.
All the sources go into the amplifier, typically by HDMI, and that handles all the source switching and sound.

Don't forget to budget at least £1,000 for cables.

If your TV has HDMI out, that's better quality than optical.

But optical can do surround sound fine.

Not entirely. It can do DVD-era surround sound codecs like Dolby Digital, but not various higher quality codecs found on BluRays like DTS-HD. It doesn't have sufficient bitrate.

Also, if you do BluRay->HDMI->TV->optical->speakers, many TVs will only output stereo because everything is terrible.

Yeah I don't trust my telly to output anything approaching good in terms of sound. I'll be using the cables that are already run as I can't be arsed replacing them. Do cables make any sort of difference at sensible volumes or is this a "gold plated HDMI" type question?

At consumer level, cables are cables

The very cheapest no-name HDMI cables can sometimes have too much crosstalk to support higher bitrate, even at modest cable lengths of 2m or so. However this only becomes an issue above 1080p@30 fps, eg. with 3d, 4K, or 60+ fps computer output. These are relatively rare.