Video Asylum

Intersting Home Theater situation

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Ranj

I am sure there must be others in this situation ----
set up my home theatre system over a period of time and so have a mix and UNMATCH of the everchanging technology.
Amongst other things it has -
1 Sony Dvd player with no digital decoder (one of the early models). Has S Video out and digital out (coax and optical).
1 Sony Receiver pre AC 3 vintage but has 6 phono connects for 5.1 output . Also has digital coax / optical inputs.
Don't want to spend money on a new DVD player or receiver with built in Dolby / DTS decoders YET (I've learnt my lesson).
Is there a cheap Dolby digital decoder available which can take the digital signal from my DVD and give me 6 outputs for my receiver.
Thanks for any suggestions
Ranj

Follow Ups:

Re: Intersting Home Theater situation Karl W. 04:59:59 10/14/00 (0)
Buy a used dvd player or a new one. You can get a single disk player for 150.00 very easily. The technology is not moving so fast that you will not get reasonable service for such a small investment. No one is going to make a separate dolby digital decoder cheaper than the price of a dvd player. Sony has plans for your money. No matter what you buy, they plan to make it obsolete so you will need to buy something new.
No cheap units if you are critical of the sound John C. - Aussie 17:02:43 10/13/00 (0)
Hi Ranj
We have an expensive hi-res system and I figured a cheap AC3 processor would do for films etc. Not so, the sound was ghastly & unlistenable so the unit (a used Technics) went out the door very quickly. I lost $ but learnt a lesson. Much research later, on AA & elsewhere with a few email responses from owners finally let me to the other extreme, a very expensive Meridian 861. This opened my ears to not only the excellent sound on many movies (prologic as well as DD) but to CDs which I had previously labelled as harsh & generally unlistenable (using a Theta Data III into a Theta DSP IIIA).
Now there may be other good used bargains out there, but the bottom line is that processors have made giant strides in recent times and the older cheaper units should be avoided. Any DD encoded discs also have encoded pro logic which is pretty good, so my advice is to wait until an affordable quality unit emerges. There is no cheap lunch which tastes any good!!!
Peace at AA
John

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