Rebuilding My Home Theatre (0 comments)
The important things I learned:
- The Sony STR-DE698/b does not upconvert S-Video to component.
- It does upconvert composite to S-Video.
- It does feature the magical Sony blue light on the front to indicate how cool DTS and Dolby Digital are.
- I still love zip ties.
- It has the same number of inputs as my TV, but they're way more useful.
It's not yet fully assembled, and a digital optical cable is still in transit, but everything's forming up as planned:
It's annoying to switch the TV input to go from S-Video to component and back, but I'd expected it.
The only thing that surprised me was the receiver's ability to pick an appropriate input on a given channel and use that when relevant. For example, I currently have my DVD player hooked up to the DVD input with S-Video and a digital coax cable. I have my Playstation 2 hooked up to the DVD input with component video and RCA audio (soon to be optical). So long as I don't use the two at the same time, everything works perfectly. I was even able to rename the input to "PS2/DVD" on the front display.
The Sin City DVD has a DTS audio track and it alone makes all this worthwhile. I just wish that the extended full throttle expanded mega pack DVD edition were released along with it so I could see the special features that I've been promised.
It's not just DVDs that benefit: I'm digging Mario Kart: Double Dash's surround sound option.