Entertainment System

Much of the entertainment system is in place.

I am running two amplifiers.

Entertainment Setup So Far

At the left on the mantlepiece is the sturdy and very flexible Hitachi HA610.  (To enlarge the photo, right click on it then select "View Image".)

At the right on the mantlepiece is the Sony STR-K780 5.1 channel entertainment system.

The HA610 supports my original 1980's era analogue components such as the Acoustic Research turntable at the bottom left, the 5-disc carousel CD player just below the HA610, and the Pioneer tuner two shelves above the HA610.  (Above the tuner is a Sony DVD player not in use.)  For this functionality the amplifier uses 1940's era RCA connectors.

The HA610 controls the two large speakers ("Major", made in Belgium) above as well as two speakers speakers of the same size ("Realistic") in the dining room.   Thus I can send sound to the living room, dining room, or both, filling the entire house with music.  I have not installed the venerable Akai reel-to-reel tape deck which was in perfect working condition when I packed it for storage in 2008.  One day I'll probably set it up and play some reels for old times' sake.

The Sony 5.1 system at the right bridges the gap between analogue and digital.  It is a high quality system, though somewhat outdated because it does not support HDMI interface.  Nevertheless with its digital inputs and coaxial, optical, and RCA interfaces, and sub woofer output, it provides the functionality that I need.

On the shelf above the Sony 5.1 is a Samsung Blue Ray DVD player.  This is a very smart little beast, giving me access the internet as well as my Seagate external disc drive that contains all of my movies.  Crucially, it has an HDMI interface.

Drying Electronic Cleaner from Hitachi Amp

Internals All Clean

For watching a blue ray DVD I send the signal to the TV set via the HDMI interface.  However, I send the sound from the DVD player to the Sony 5.1 via an optical cable ("Video 2").  The result is that I get the home theater surround sound effect, with voice coming from the small speaker on on the mantlepiece above the TV set, and other sound coming from the two small speakers next to the large speakers above and two other speakers along the rear wall behind the reclining chairs.  For good measure I can augment this by also getting sound from the TV speakers.  Later I will install a sub woofer which will hopefully make the floor boards vibrate when the German Tiger appears in "Saving Private Ryan".  I have also used the Blue Ray DVD for looking at TV programs from the ABC's video-on-demand internet service and have watched a couple of movies on my Seagate disc drive.

For ordinary TV watching I can rely on the TV as a stand-alone system or send the sound from the TV to the Sony 5.1 amplifier via an optical cable ("Video 1"), which allows me to get sound from the TV, the Sony entertainment system, or both.  The remote controls for the TV and the Sony 5.1 allow me full audio control, including muting.

The TV shown in the photo was purchased for the role of a second TV in the kitchen/dining area so that I can watch the news while I am cooking and eating.  Soon I will purchase a TV that is larger - about 42" but still modest by modern standards - which I will mount in that open space above the fireplace.

Thanks to very timely advice from my brother Arnold I should be able to set up the smaller TV in the other room using a wireless system, thereby avoiding the time and expense of reticulation of coaxial wiring to different parts of the house.

Finally, I must give much credit and praise to Brenda's son Stephen for the entertainment setup.  When I fired up the HA-610 amplifier after six years of storage the sound was catastrophic and I was sure that the sound board had failed, meaning that the amplifier would be a write-off.  This was very bad because there would be no way of purchasing a modern amplifier with the versatility and RCA analogue support that I required.

I placed the amplifier in Stephen's hands and he spent days meticulously cleaning every part of the unit, particularly its controls.  The results were spectacular and the amplifier is now working as new.

While he was dealing with the Hitachi amplifier Stephen led me to the Sony 5.1 entertainment system in a great op shop that he had discovered earlier.  It was to be a stop gap in the likely event that the Hitachi was a write-off.  The Sony 5.1, including the 5 sepakers, cost me a grand total of $85, and has turned out to be one of the bargains of my year.

But wait, there's more!  The blue ray DVD play was a birthday gift from Stephen.

Our mutual friend Simon alerted me to the fact that any DVD sound that I sent to the TV set via the HDMI connection then back to the Sony 5.1 via an optical cable would strip out the entertainment coding, eliminating the surround sound effect, and there should be a second optical input in the Sony 5.1 for sending the sound directly from the DVD to it.  And so it was.

And Brenda helped.  For days I fretted to Stephen that the diagrams in the TV manual showed no outputs of any kind, meaning that I would have to install a splitter to take RCA signals off the HDMI cable and send them to the Hitachi amplifier.  Fortunately she read the fine print and pointed out the existence of one precious optical output from the TV, which changed everything, because now I could send the sound from the TV to the Sony speakers.  (By then I had ordered the HDMI-RCA splitter, and I may set it up one day and see how directing the sound to the large speakers via the Hitachi amplifier works out.)

Life is so much better when you have friends helping you on your journey.