Hi all,
I'm trying to help my dad make some decisions about a potential upgrade to his home theather setup. About 6 years ago, he dropped a TON of money with a custom installer to put in some very high-end equipment (Runco projector, Aerial speakers, Theta Amps, Lexicon MC-1 processor, in-ceiling motorized Stewart Screen, etc.)
Long story short, recently, a lightning storm fried the controller and projector, so he's got some insurance money to put to use and as a result, I've got him convinced that he should take the money and upgrade to HD (meaning a new projector, Blu-Ray player, receiver, and cabling).
He has an extremely long throw distance that rules out many of the projectors I'm familiar with, so he'll likely be going with another cheaper Runco 1080p projector, which I don't strongly disagree with.
However, his installer made another recommendation that I have a harder time agreeing with. The recommendation was to forgo buying a new receiver that supported the latest HD sound formats and instead purchase a
used Lexicon MC-1 sound processor (for 1k). It doesn't have HDMI inputs and cannot do any of the new HD sound formats, but the installer says that it is so far superior to the receivers you could get for $1k that he'd be better off buying the Lexicon and forgoing HD sound. The installer's argument is that it is such a superior processor that it makes up for the missing HD sound. I find this incredibly hard to believe, but I thought I'd turn to some of the experts in the crowd here for advice as well. I'd appreciate any thoughts you have on his options here.
My thought is that since the receiver is just being used as a pre-out to decode the sound formats and push it to the Theta amps he's got, there can't be much to lose by moving to the Denon, but maybe I'm missing something...
Thanks in advance.
Jason
PS: The installer also recommended a $1,000
50' Transparent HDMI cable. I'm working that issue separately with him.
