Games & gear forum: PS3 vs Home Theater, Please Help

Thanks Jimmy for your quick response. Considering I am in no way computer savvy, would you recommend I just go with a standard Blu-Ray home theater system with an i-pod dock?

It depends. XBMC is really not that difficult to set up or use, but I guess it's up to you. You can download a version that can be burned directly to a CD for a no-install trial of it if you like.

Considering you could always drop in a HTPC later, you could very well just go with a stand-alone bluray player. Whether or not you go with the PS3 or some other player is up to you. The PS3 is pretty price competitive still, but standalone players are starting to get to be around $200 now.

What I would strongly advise against, are all-in-one solutions where you have a DVD player of some kind, and it comes bundled with a set of speakers and what not. They're not worth the price. A lot of times the parts are all a single unit, and so if the DVD player breaks, the rest of the stuff is pretty much useless. It's worth the extra money to have something where you can swap parts in and out on a whim.

Well,
you would have your:
TV
blu-ray or pS3 <--- will not act as a receiver for speakers.

and a surround system like a : home theater in a box ( approx 300-500 for a OK system)comes with receiver, Speakers....
Don't know if you can do a Ipod with a ps3 or not
But for sure with a home theater system as you stated. Even if it doesn't have a docking station you can plug it in to the back of the receiver with a cable.

Don't do that. I wouldn't trust someone at Best Buy to carry a $50 stereo to my car, let alone set up a home theater system. Not to mention you'll pay a couple hundred bucks extra to have them screw it up for you.

Besides, it's better to do it yourself, so that way you know the topology of the whole setup. You know what cables go where, and how everything is connected. So if you want to add a device later, or change something out, you have a pretty good idea what to expect going in.

Setting up a home theater isn't like brain surgery where not just everyone can do it. It's pretty simple on the whole of it. Some people will try and make it more complicated than it needs to be by trying to tweak crossover frequencies and a bunch of other nonsense, but really you just need to know the basics of how to position the speakers, how to plug them into the receiver, and then these days just connect an HDMI cable. You don't even really need to know the difference between audio and video cables so much anymore, since it's all just one cable. But even if it wasn't, it's all color coded anyway, so as long as you're not colorblind, should be pretty straightforward and simple.

Best Buy has it's Geek Squad and stereo "experts" to basically sell a service to the lazy and/or stupid. There's not really all that much to keeping your system running smoothly indefinitely, just like there's not much to setting up a home theater. If you really want to get anal about the details, then sure, you can get lost in a quagmire of triviality, but for the most part it's basically something a 3 year old could do. It's just matching the color on the plugs, or in the case of HDMI, putting it in the only slot that it will fit. It's not rocket science by any stretch.

And another reason not to go to Best Buy, is that if you buy some really nice setup, now some Best Buy employee knows exactly where you live and what you have. Around here, there was a local car stereo shop when I was growing up. Had a bit of a reputation, where shortly after people would have them put in a new stereo system into their car, the person's car would get broken into and the stereo system stolen. Don't think for a second that Best Buy employees are necessarily any different.