Best value home theatre in a box (HTIB) - choosing a cheap home cinema

Ok so I decided I needed to get my own home theatre system. Not least for an end-user perspective for our surround sound DVD Authoring services and Film Production services.

I didn't want to spend too much but as I started researching it became clear that this game is a very slippery slope, which each extra £100 here and there apparently easily worth it. Before long you've tripled your budget and are convinced its all worth it. And to an extent it probably would be - but, if you had a lower budget to begin with you can still get a great home cinema/theatre without letting yourself slide down that slope.

Lets start by looking at the sound side of things. The first thing you will probably find is people tempting you with a 'separates' based system rather than an all in one system, or Home Theatre In a Box (HTIB), and, yes these may sound better. But they cost a lot more. So if you're serious about sticking to a budget you need to ignore the separates and find the best Home Theater In a Box (HTIB) system.

I actually spent over an hour in my local electronics superstore testing these out using a demo CD and after going back and forth it seemed quite clear that out of systems from Samsung, LG, Philips and Panasonic, all around the £200-£300 bracket, the Sony DAV-DZ260 5.1ch DVD Home Theatre System seemed to clearly represent the best value at the bottom of the price bracket at £200.

The sound seemed to me to be quite obviously the most balanced and had good imaging, considering it's a satellite/sub type. Not to mention loud its very 'big' sound, sounding great at high volumes. I tested the system by playing music which is always the hardest thing for home cinema speakers to do so I figured if I picket the best one for music it's performance for surround sound from DVDs would also be superior.

Another thing that appealed to me was the compactness of the speakers, all 4 corner speakers are small at about 6 inches tall so can easily be positioned on a wall without dominating smaller rooms.

The dvd player/receiver of the kit is high spec'd too - it has a microphone based auto calibration function (only found on the £400 Panasonic model) as well as HDMI upscaling and output and an optical input. It also has a media port which has connect with accessories to interact with iPods or provide wi-fi connectivity. Good to allow for a future upgrade.

Next step on the road to getting a good value system is shopping around. I got mine from Amazon.co.uk which had the best price on the internet at the time at £141.39 - put the local electric store to shame in fact.

So thats the DVD, audio receiver and speakers and subwoofer all sorted, for under £150. Go down the separates route and you'll soon be looking at £250 for speakers and sub (minimum), another £200 for the receiver, and then another £50 for the DVD player.

No to get the best picture for the money to add to the picture. I had a rough budget of £500 for the whole home cinema system. So this meant I had about £360 left for the tv. I wanted something power efficient and a reasonable size. I think 32" was too big for my living room so went for 26". After looking around and reading lots of reviews I went for the Sony KDL26S3000 - 26" Widescreen Bravia HD Ready LCD TV - With Freeview - again Amazon.co.uk had very nearly the best price on the internet, I went with them so I could get the speakers at the same time. Again - very very happy with this choice. The 'Bravia Sync' feature means it works very well with sound system. The menus and features are easy to use and there is a lot of control over the picture. The backlight is evenly distributed and it's dynamic contrast function is clever and works well. You can actually see it working when text fades in and out on a black background. Of course you can turn this off if you want and fall back to it's normal 800:1 contrast ratio.

Of course the whole system is ready to upgrade to a Blu-Ray Player when the come down in price a bit. The TV has two HDMI inputs and the audio receiver can decode DTS and Dolby Digital through it's optical input.

In total it came in a bit over my £500 budget but it's still a steal and a great value home cinema system, highly recommended.

Buy the Sony DAV-DZ260 5.1ch DVD Home Theatre System and the Sony KDL26S3000 - 26" Widescreen Bravia HD Ready LCD TV - With Freeview from Amazon.co.uk