Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Upgrade Justification to the Spouse?

No, I'm not planning on upgrading my Axioms. I think that they are great as is, but what about other equipment. How do you convince your spouse that an upgrade would be nice, even when everything today is working just fine?

This is one of the things that has really held me out of the Hi-Def disc arena for so long. I have a nice Pioneer Elite receiver that does everything I want and more, but doesn't have HDMI inputs or HD audio decoders, but it DOES have analog audio inputs. I was waiting for HiDef disc players with analog audio to come down in price, but when I could pick up an HD-DVD player (no analog audio) for $90, I jumped on it. Now Blu-Ray is sitting around $300 for the lowest priced player, and the "best one" is still the PS3 according to a lot of people, so no analog audio output option, or at least no where near the price point I'd like it to be.

So, how do you go about telling someone, that really doesn't care to understand HDMI and analog audio that a new receiver would be THAT much better? She thinks things are great now (and they are), so that is the hard sell.

The other one is that I'd love to jump up to a 1080p projector. These babies now have such a better contrast ratio and other specs over my 720p Sanyo Z3 that I think it would be awesome, however again, my wife is telling me that we don't watch enough movies or TV to justify upgrading, and I hear comments like, why isn't THIS good enough? When will it stop? Etc...

I've tried to tell her that since we got the projector 4 years ago, even if we averaged only 1 movie a week and no TV (we watch a little TV on it, but not much. More than 6 months ago, but not huge numbers of hours), we would be at about 208 movies. Take the cost of the projector, about $1800 back then, and divide the 208 movies, and you are at $8.65 per movie in the cost of the projector.

The math seems to make sense to me, but then she would say, well, that doesn't cover the cost of the speakers, screen, receiver, etc. True, but I could keep those (except maybe the receiver ;)) for years to come....

It isn't like I have money to throw around, and I do have other things I've been wanting to buy for a long time (a shed and home theater seating are tops on my list) but I like to plan and budget out a little.

So how do you guys/gals do it?

I dunno. But Happy Birthday!

Exactly! You don't need to justify anything on your birthday!! Hide the birthday cake mix to distract her for a few moments and go buy what you need.

Have a great day!!

If you figure it out Nick, let me know the secret. happy b'day by the way!!!!1

Do what I do ... "Look woman I'll buy whatever I feel like buying regardless of what your thoughts are and don't ask me again about the price, now go get my dinner ready dammit."

Yea, that's what I do.



Happy Birthday Nick!

Great, this has turned into a birthday / sarcasm thread...

I can always count on you guys to get things off topic, can't I?



Thanks for the birthday wishes by the way! - And yes, I do feel old!

Old, ha ha, just wait until your my age.

I'd tell you what I did, but I'm divorced so maybe it wasn't such a good stratagy. I guess I'll stick to happy birthday!

Another Happy Birthday wish Nick, I know with my wife most the time I have to convince her that whatever I'm buying will somehow save us money in the long run. Kinda hard to do with electronics.
There's always the, it would sure be romantic to have a nice little system in the bedroom, that way at least you're utilizing the old equipment.

A birthday is an excellent justification for an upgrade!
Upgrade your age and get a free HD receiver!