Apologies for coming over as someone who knows nothing but i dont really when it comes to home entertainment.

I have a 42# Regza Z Series TV at home and wanted home cinema system with few speakers as well as a HD DVD player.

Now here is my question - I understand all home sound systems come with DVD player. What advice can people give me ? I was looking at Toshiba HD-E1 DVD player but is it better to get the DVD player with the home sound system. You can tell i dont really know where to start on this one and any advice would be most welcome. I also want to be able to play Sky Movies through the sound system rather than just DVDs.

Thanks

Wrong wrong wrong. Some home cinema systems incorporate a DVD player - and they are a pain in the arse. Basically they are a DVD player that comes with its own speakers - and cause problem after problem for people who then want to feed their audio from their TVs, their satellite boxes, their PVRs and STBs, their videos and their games consoles into them. Avoid them like the plague if you are serious about having surround sound from more than just your DVDs.

Buy whichever DVD player you like the look of - HD or otherwise. It will have an optical or coaxial output (or both) on it to connect it to a dedicated AV amp or receiver. Sky+ and Sky HD also have optical output. Your TV, VCR and Freeview box (if you have one) all have stereo RCA output cables. Buy a surround sound system (amp plus speakers) that offers the inputs you require for all the pieces of kit that you want to listen to in surround sound. But don't go down the home cinema including DVD player path if you can at all help it.

Thanks for your help that is good advice. I assume most decent HD DVD players now have all the right amount of connections available to plug everything into ?

What broadz is suggesting is two separate units. the DVD player and a surround sound amp. All the kit plugs into the amp not the DVD player. All the DVD player requires is some format of digital audio output nothing more (for the audio side anyway).

Your Sky box etc plug into the amp also. So nothing else need be connected to the DVD.

The big advantage of having separates is that it is far easier and often cheaper to upgrade. For example there are currently two competing High Definition DVD formats HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. A player designed specifically for one format cannot play disks in the other format. Bit like VHS and Betamax back when VCRs were new.

So if one format ever wins out and you have the "wrong" player you may be glad you went with separates. if you did get an all in one system (and I don't know of any high definition systems) then you would have to throw away the entire sytem to change formats. With separates you only have to change the player. And by the time one or other format wins (if they ever do) players should be a whole lot cheaper just like VCRs became (hopefully anyway).

whats your budget?