I was in college and I had an old (funny, we still have it stored away in our basement) 19" TV that my parents got for me from some hotel that was getting new TVs.
I had a sinple 2-head VCR. Then came the upgrades. I got a 4-head VCR. Woohoo. What a better picture!
Then I got my first "receiver." OK, so it was a "boom box" with detachable speakers that I used instead of the single TV speaker. The boombox has an "aux" in that used RCA jacks from the VCR. Wow. Stereo....
Then I added a CD player. Don't recall the brand. It was cheap, that is all I know.
After college, I got some good graduation money, so what did I do, I bought a cheap Pioneer surround receiver, and some massive (with 15" woofers) KLH speakers. Bigger speakers are better, right?
Wow. Now I can watch movies really loud... (Still on a 19" TV)...
Then I added a cheap KLH "surround" package with a little center channel, and the two surrounds. A little while later, I added a passive subwoofer, and a second center channel. They were cheap, and two is better than one, right?
Then I added some crazy single unit rear surround speaker that was shaped like a trapezoid and had one speaker on the right and one on the left with seperate inputs. The idea was that the single speaker could replace the normal two surround speakers.
Oddly enough, though, these speakers made it into my first home theater. I just kept throwing more speakers into the mix. I had the thing wired for the 2 center channels, the two fronts, two surrounds, and then did my own "matrixing" of the rear surround trapezoid speaker (I had rear surround before there was such a thing). Oh, then I added a Front Left/Center and Front Right/Center as a matrix of the center channel and front channels. smoother front sound field, right?
Oh, don't forget the 150 watt 10" KLH powered sub. Bass, yippy!
My TV was now a 48" RCA rear projection, and I had a nice Pioneer Dolby Digital/DTS receiver, and my first DVD player (a good Pioneer player). I fell in love with DVDs. I still had the old Pioneer receiver too that I was using to power my bass shakers. I also swapped out the single disc CD player for a 25 disc Pioneer CD player.
It was the DVD player (any DVD player would do) that really got me thinking about the purchasing decisions I had made over the years. I looked for what was cheap, and spent a ton of time tuning and tweaking to get things to sound as good as cheap speakers could sound.
So I have a whole horde of KLH (I came to later call them Krappy Like Hell) speakrs. Once I learned more about home theater, I was ashamed of what I had. I told myself that my next home theater would be better. I wouldn't go nuts and spend $30,000 or something on it, but I wanted good, respectible gear.
SO that home theater was built some 6 years ago, and we moved from that house 2 years ago. Now here I am with nice Axiom speakers, Pioneer (did I mention that I like Pioneer?) THX receiver, Panasonic S97 DVD player, Sanyo Z3 projector, Carada 104" screen, SVS 20-39 PCi sub, etc.
It is about time. I can't imagine going back to those crappy KLH speakers.
So that is the story.
Check out my cheesy web site, and you can see both photos of my new home theater and the old one...
