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Old 16-02-2006, 13:41
syberianman
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I have a fairly standard CRT TV with separate VCR and DVD players. In the same room I have a fairly standard PC (Win 98) and finally I have a Music System which has seen better days. I am wondering, if investing in a new Music System, whether I can begin to link things together. For example play a DVD with picture on TV but sound on Music System. Now the man in Comet says I should do all this from the PC these days, but I can't get my head round that, wouldn't it mean that anyone using the TV will tie up the computer and vice-versa. In particular I might want to change configurations so that one evening the TV will go through my best speakers, another evening I might want the PC to do this. This seems to mean ferreting around the back of the assorted bits of hardware swapping cables over. Can anyone pt me right please?
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Old 16-02-2006, 13:59
Astaroth
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What sort of budget are you looking at?

There are many options for what you want to do and depending on your budget and the quality of sound you want to get out of it will dictate the correct way to go. Also do you want to have surround sound setup or not?

One of the easiest ways to go (if you want cinema sound) would be to by a home cinema amp which has multiple zones (eg the Denon AVR 2805). With an amp like this you can set it up so that there is a 5.1 surround sound setup and a seperate stereo setup going through the amp at any one time. Basically you can select a different input (say DVD and CD) for Zone 1 and Zone 2 so zone 1 speakers play the sound of the DVD (in surround sound) and zone 2 speakers play the sound of the CD player. The idea generally is that you have them in different rooms but there is no reason why you have to.

With these kinds of amps you can also route all the video signals through it too to give a 1 button switch between sources.

My one reservation on the recommendation is that the sound quality for stereo reproduction is not going to be of an equivalent standard of a similarly priced stereo amp (which isnt surprising given that you are paying for 7 channels of amplification along with a lot of electronics to do the decoding against 2 channels of amplification in a stereo amp). That isnt to say that they are awful - I know many people who use it for their stereo equipment - but just to make sure you are aware that there is a slight sacrifice.

A multimedia PC may be an alternative option but I do not know of any where you would be able to seperate out the sound into 2 seperate amps if you wanted to watch a DVD on the TV with sound but also have a CD playing through a different set of speakers. With a powerful enough PC with the correct hardware it wouldnt be an issue having the DVD playing on "one screen" with you doing other things on another screen (unless you are talking about top of the line 3d graphics gaming in which case performance would be impacted)
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Old 16-02-2006, 16:38
syberianman
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Thanks for this, the 2805 looks a relevant bit of kit but at £500 I would have to think carefully. I anticipated paying £100 to £200 for a music system of sufficient quality for my requirements but would pay more for this cross-system functionality. On one point, I would not need speakers to run two sound sources simultaneously, but I would want speakers on one source and headphones on a second and this could vary.
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Old 16-02-2006, 17:06
Astaroth
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Denon (and its competitors) do a range of models with different functionality - I said the 2805 as I own one and so know it does the zone 2 option (the 3806 has 3 zones) - it may be that one of the lower models will do everything that you need.

I dont know of any which have a "zone 2" which goes through a headphone socket off the top of my head but if you went for wireless headphones then this wouldnt be an issue, if you want wired then a headphone amp could be used connected to the pre-outs for zone 2 and generally cost between £50-300 depending on quality.
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Old 16-02-2006, 17:34
syberianman
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Many thanks, I'll start investigating.
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