Your TV stereo setup...

[cfz2882]

what upgraded sound system are you running with your stereo TV? I wanted to upgrade
the sound of the sanyo plasma TV from the dinky little built in speakers-the
upgrade was found one saturday morning last year while hitting the yard sales:
at one sale got a scuffed,grubby,late-'90s era technics home theater receiver/amp
for $10-it cleaned up ok and works flawless even if the amp watts seems to fall a
little short of the claims on the front panel LOL.At the next sale got,also for$10
a pair of B&W bookshelf speakers:made in england in 1993,they have a 5"woofer,1"
dome tweeter and are ported.These speakers sound real decent for the size includin
pretty good bass at low volume thanks to the ported cabinets and long-throw woofer
They do knock and bottom out if volume too high when bass hits though-a drawback of
the ported design apparently...
For $20 of lucky yard sale buys i dramaticly improved the sound of my garage TV
setup! Since the technics home theater amp has an output for"center channel",i
might hook a bass speaker to that and see how it sounds.

 

[petek]

Right now nothing. At one time I had the tv hooked up to my JVC stereo system with the two large front speakers and two smaller rear surrounds. Hubby never cared for it, too loud, too noisy. How the tv is now positioned and the layout in our family room we don't have the stereo in there now and even so it would be a pain to run rear speaker wires up and around doorways etc. Wireless sounds the way to go and I'll be interested to hear what others who have those, think about them.

 

[classiccaprice]

The first picture is my tv on here. Awesome vintage surround sound!

7 ideas to house a flatscreen TV in your retro interior - Retro Renovation

The recent invitation to readers to upload photos of their televisions and how they incorporate them into their homes yielded a bundle of ideas. Today, I want to spotlight some of my favorites — in particular, several that start with vintage furniture as a base for our big ole high def plasmas...

retrorenovation.com

 

[wayupnorth]

My system was put together MANY years ago. My main TV is connected to the Pioneer 5 channel VSX-D458 receiver that will do much more than I can fathom and the speakers are 25 + year old Bose Interaudio SA-1000 models. Big honkin things that were only on the commercial market for nightclubs. I bought a refoaming kit for under 20 bucks for the woofers from a place in Florida last year that shipped it right away and it worked perfect, sound like new. The DirecTV doesnt give good sound quality, plus their music stations stink. A CD turned up will shake the neighbors floors.

 

[mattl]

As many here are into machines, I'm into audio and video.  my main setup consists of a 50" plasma connected to an Onkyo 7.1 channel receiver with a 10" powered sub-woofer and 8 speakers.  My receiver has Audyssey which will allow either Width or Height speakers in addition to the normal 3 front speakers, and adjusts the sound field for room reflections and evens out the frequency response.  The width speakers replace the rear speakers in the 7.1 setup, I only have 7 channels of amplification so the receiver switches between wide and rear, but there is little 7.1 content.  The sides are still active, but the width speakers add a lot to the sound.  I'm a fan of Mission speakers and use them in many of my setups, and all 5 front speakers are Mission as the rears, but the sides are Allison.

 

The other 3 audio/video setups I have around the house are all setup up for 5.1 audio, the one in my bedroom gets the second most use, there I use a trusty set of AR 2xs as the front, with Mission as the side speakers.  I have not used the built in speakers of any display in years, a decade maybe.  If that is all you use you are really missing out on a lot of great sound.  Pretty much any of the HD content on broadcast or cable channels is done in DD 5.1 and there is a lot of side channel action.

 

[cfz2882]

yeah,high performance sound really adds another dimension to the TV movie
experience! and my sound upgrade is a simple,modest one compaired to those with
more and bigger speakers.The upgraded sound TV is out in the garage,42"sanyo plasma
in the house the main TV is a LCD 42"sanyo-when i bought the TV,i thought the LCD
had higher performance and sharper pic with it's higher pixel count than the plasma
but i thought the plasma was "cooler"technology and decided to buy that one too-
once situated in their positions and watched under "real"conditions,i discovered
the plasma was higher performance than the LCD in several ways-more accurate and
vivid colors,better contrast,not as washed out as LCD TVs can be,no pixelation,
and faster response(though the LCD i got is pretty fast for an LCD)

 

[qualin]

We have a 52" LED DLP TV set which is fed from a Sony ES Series 7.1 receiver. We're running a 6.1 setup right now, Center channel, two rear, two front and a subwoofer. The receiver is only 100 watts, but it has plenty of power to drive everything. The subwoofer I believe is a 50 watt amplified unit.

The two front channel speakers are Sony, the center and sub I believe are Audio Technica and the rears are bookshelf style speakers made by JBL on stands.

Some friends on mine tend to replace their system every 5-10 years, so we end up getting their hand-me-downs. The receiver is new, replacing an older Harmon Kardon unit, only because it didn't have HDMI capability.

Before that, we ran a 32" CRT straight into an older Sony Analog Receiver which I used primarily as just a straight stereo amplifier. (With a lot of A/V inputs!)

What I have now seems to work fine for what we use it for.

 

[whirlcool]

We have a Sony 36" WEGA television (CRT style) and it's not hooked up to the sound system even though my SAE P101 preamp has a TV input. We're on DirecTV for programming.

I have always been a bit of an electronics fiend. You know the type, the first usually have the new products as they come on market. But over the years I have relaxed that quite a bit. We bought our Sony set in 2003. I think it gets a great picture. So we are not that motivated to buy a new set. I'm pretty happy with what we have.

Recently I have stopped watching television live. This is due to all the stupid commercials and such. I think it has ruined television programming. So I DVR the shows I want to watch and watch the shows when I want to watch the shows and
commercial skip through the commercials. I find that I have much more time available to myself for other pursuits. Heck, just commercial bypass two 1 hour shows and you have 40 minutes back to yourself for that day.

I don't know if it is just me, but I also find AM/FM radio worthless for pretty much the same reasons.

 

[qualin]

I'll admit, it's kind of strange how CRT's just went obsolete so quickly, suddenly LCD panels started cropping up everywhere.

It's strange watching people bring in perfectly functional CRT TV sets into the local e-cycling center just because they wanted something bigger.

Realistically, 36" is about as large as CRT's could ever get, only because they would be too wide to fit through a door. I can only imagine how heavy your set is. I have a friend who is trying to get rid of his 47" rear projection TV.. and the 42" rear projection TV which my Dad bought back in 1992 failed last year.

Now, it's strange to see 60" TV sets selling for less than $2k here. They're so thin you can hang them on a wall too.

I find it kind of strange how you see old ads of families standing around their 1950's vintage 17" TV set, while the add touts "Greater viewing angles! Extra large 17" display for perfect family viewing!"

When I was growing up, we had the classic Ford Philco 21" Console-Style TV which took about 5 minutes to warm up when I switched it on. I still remember watching Happy Days on it, the first thing I could see was the Fonz's white shirt as the rest of the picture slowly came into view.

I remember when broadcasts first started coming out in Stereo.. I thought someone at the TV station had lost their mind, only because I wondered how on Earth they could broadcast stereo when all the TV sets I had ever seen only had one speaker.

 

[qualin]

By the way...

Now that I made the post above, I was born in 1974. We had that old Ford Philco set until I was about ten years old.. (I think that set was of a 1970 vintage.) My parents replaced it with a 21" Magnavox console TV set. (With a converter that worked on wonky channel numbers.) That set lasted us right up until 1992 when my father had bought that 42" rear projection TV.

By the time it had failed, I had already moved out and was watching TV on a 14" CRT Samsung TV which I still have today. It resides in my bedroom, but I rarely use it.

 

[112561]

My Uncle Charles worked for Philco, we did not get any discounts, but that's why Daddy's first two television sets were Philco. The first one that graced this livingroom was likely a 21" definitely a tabletop with the knobs across the bottom front. It sat on a swivel table. Then we got a beautiful contemporary Philco with NO UHF, the Cool-Chassis, a speaker on each side of the console cabinet, four tapered legs, and a nice walnut like finish. Then, IIRC we got a General Electric in a Danish inspired cabinet also on legs, (looked like a color set) but it wasn't. One day in '78 I walked in and saw the new metal cabinet/plastic Danish swivel base Zenith Chromacolor with knobs. After that, the 1984 Zenith console with pushbutton Space Command (still have the remote) and after Daddy died in June '87, Mom got the '96 RCA stereo tv console which I still have.

 

I watch a 9" Zenith Almond color set hooked to a remote Comcast box.

 

[whirlcool]

I was browsing my local Goodwill (gosh that place stinks!) and came across a 21 inch version of our Sony WEGA. It's been sitting there for awhile now, the price is $19.95 WITH remote control. I have been thinking about getting it for the bedroom.
It's a miniature version of our main set.

But we have NEVER had a bedroom television. My parents had one and always left it on all night long and the sound of the static after the programming signed off used to wake me up. For me, the bedroom is for reading, sleeping and other fun activities. Not for television viewing. If I want to watch television, I'll go to the den.

Maybe I'm strange as we know a lot of people with televisions in their bedroom.

BTW, that 36" WEGA we have almost weighs 300 lbs. It takes four people to lift it into the entertainment center. Fortunately we've only had to do that twice. It seems all the weight is in the back left side. I think it's the transformers that weigh so much. But it gets a beautiful picture and has been failure free.

 

[petek]

Our local Habitat ReStore is chock a block full of CRT's, even moreso now than after last Xmas. There's been a few of those monstrous Sony's in there. You kinda have to shake your head when you look at them now

 

[cfz2882]

good CRT TVs discarded

my local salvation army and other used shops are plugged with CRTs too-many late
model mid-2000s era,see them at the curb too-last summer seen one that looked
vintage enough to get my interest so i grabbed it,turned out to be a 1990 zenith
19"-not only did it still work,but the performance was very good!-a keeper.
LOL,find some bad ones too-one relative is a chronic smoker and his cheapie late-
'80s era emerson 19"has a cigarette smoke scum so thick on the screen that the
picture is tinted a nasty yellow brown-yuck! This guy was given a 32"vizio LCD as
a gift,but the vizio sits unused in it's box while he continues to use the scuzzy
old emerson-don't know if he can't figure out how to use the new tv or what...

 

[mattl]

I actually have a 38' HD CRT Tv, the biggest HD CRT made, and it still works well.  It's relegated to my basement rec room setup as I wanted something bigger for my main viewing.  In the AV community it's a well know fact the displays "magically' shrink after the first week or tow of use.  My rule of thumb when helping anyone buy a new display, "buy the next size up from what you think you want."  I went 50" thinking it would be plenty big for my space but within weeks I wished I had gone 55" or even 60" .

 

[tolivac]

For me-my TV is a Hitachi 57" CRT RPT-1080I resolution-BluRay discs from the Panasonic BluRay player are excellent.this set is a little over 10Yrs old-but still going-its like the Everready Bunny.For sound-A Onkyo 777 5.1 receiver and Klipsch speakers.No subwoofer required-two of my Klipsch systems each have 2 12" woofers-the low end from these are BETTER than most subwoofers I have heard.
CRT sets today---Reasons they are junked-digital broadcasts of course can't be received on them.converter boxes harder to get.Just about ALL broadcasts and movies are or course widescrean.My RPTV is widescreen.The picture tubes in these old sets are getting soft-folks want the razor sharp color pictures not pastel color ones from weak CRT's.I see so many CRT sets at yard sales-pass 'em by-you are lucky to GIVE them away.Folks want the LARGER WIDESCREEN picture that regular CRT sets won't provide-and the high def.
Stereo broadcast TV--The set MUST have the stereo audio decoder(Like stereo FM)and two amps and speakers for stereo.If the set has one speaker-of course you won't hear the soundtrack in stereo.Since the bandwidth on TV aural was narrower than FM broadcast-the seaparation was poor.
so lots of times--made little difffrence.the Dolby Digital soundtrack on modern digital broadcasts helpted TV sound better than anything--and in the analog days-the transmitter had to be equipped with the stereo encoder-exciter.Later transmitters built in the 80's and so on had them-but transmitters older than that didn't-and will the encoder work?Stereo analog TV soundtracks were a disappointment.Many stations just didn't bother.

 

[runematic]

My current setup is a Mitsubishi 73" DLP 3d tv with the audio hooked up by optical output into a Panasonic dolby 7.1 amp. The speakers I am currently using are a whole set of Paradigm Labs that I stole at an auction for $35! I priced them out and the retail (at the time) was over $1200! There are 2 front towers, 1 center, 2 wide, 2 rear, and a kick-a$$ subwoofer.

Years ago I ran the audio through my DJ system at the time. I used altec speakers, a Yamaha amp-head (professional duty, not home duty) and my mixing board. I could really crank the crap out of that thing. It was a neat setup but not very practical.