Page 1 of Packard Bell 5800 Speakers - 6 into 2 won`t go - help!!

Hi,

Got a present of these well reviewed speakers but unfortunately where it has six connections to go into my Philips DVD 711, the DVD player on ly has two input channels (only two speakers will work). Is there any way of getting around this problem? Guy in a hardware shop tells me no and is trying to flog me his own Pioneer DVD player which has the six connections. But there`s usually a way - is there some interconnector maybe??

I`m no great expert but I reckon the "guy in a hardware shop" is right. I don`t believe that this kit has it`s own decoder. If you want full Dolby/DTS 5.1 surround sound you`ll either have to change your DVD player to one with a built in decoder (it`ll have the six outputs) or, preferably, buy an amp with built in decoder (I`ve recently bought the very nice Denon AVR 1602). You may be able to play in Pro Logic surround but I`m not entirely sure how you`d go about doing this.

Thanks - he offered to sell me his Pioneer 717 for a reasonable price but which is Region 2 (currently have multiregional Philips). He knows where I can get the Pioneer chipped but do you or anyone know if whether this model experiences any probelems after being chipped.

Tell me more about the Denon AVR 1602 - how much, where to get, should it be compatible with any speakers and does it include the subwoofer? Any help appreciated.

Can`t help you with the Pioneer, unfortunately I`m clueless about that!

The Denon is purely an av amplifier (with a built in tuner), no speakers come with it. It should work perfectly well with your speakers and will allow you to hear Dolby 5.1 and DTS in all their glory. It is a fairly serious piece of kit, however, (mine cost £270 from hifijunkies.co.uk but I have seen others claim to have seen it online for £250 - can`t remember where from!) but will allow you plenty of scope for future speaker upgrades.

There are cheaper av amps out there if that`s the route you want to go. Have a look at richersounds.com for some ideas. The Denon has the advantage of also having Dolby Pro Logic 2 - which was the deciding factor for me.

Even with my shabby old mix `n` match speakers it blew me away!

Find the 1602 for £249 at http://www.hifistore.co.uk
Trouble is, you`d then need to get different speakers too - the Packard Bell kit has amplification built in, but no decoder, hence your current problem. If you plugged you Denon into these speakers, the Packard Bell stuff would get fed an already amplified signal - kaboom. Only possibility is if the Denon has "pre-outs" - i.e. decoded, non amplified signals ready to be amplified by something else - for all channels. You really would be losing out on most of the Denon`s qualities, though.

Unless you want to go the whole hog (you`d be looking at the very least at £150 for a set of speakers to go with the Denon), you may need to consider a different DVD player with decoder built in (as mentioned in your post). I would have thought that it would be more expensive to buy a R2 player (i.e. that Pioneer) and get it chipped rather than buy either an already chipped player from somewhere like http://www.multiregionmagic.co.uk or http://www.techtronics.com , or buy a "hackable" player such as the Cyberhome 528 (£99).
It really depends on your budget etc - if you like your current player, then you might prefer to spend towards amp and speakers.

This item was edited on Sunday, 20th January 2002, 09:18

Thanks Guys - Looked at Techtronics and they have the Philips 762 for a pretty reasonable price. In the diagram for their audio outs etc., they have six outlets - I think this is what I`m looking for to be compatible with the Packard Bell speakers, is it??????? I`m going to try and see if I can find one in the high street to be absolutely sure.

One more question - when a machine is described as having 5.1 ch (as opposed to 2 ch) does this automatically mean that it will have the six outlets (2 for front, 2 for rear and 2 for bass)?

Actually it`s Front Left speaker, Front Right speaker, Centre speaker (for natural sounding speech that looks like it`s coming out of the actors mouths and any other centrally placed sound!), Surround Left, Surround Right and Subwoofer - and that makes up yer 6 channels.

Good luck with your setup.

AN ALTERNATIVE
TINY on www.tiny.com seem to be selling videologic Digitheatre for £150

from picture looks like the 5 speaker kit plus sub plus the DECODER that you need, it`s had favourable reviews elsewhere. Curry`s flog it for 200quid or 250 in silver
they describe it as SPEAKERS but pic shows decoder?? need to check I guess.

This would mean you could feed a digital signal from your current DVD player ( it also has the 5.1 inputs via 6 phonos), but you would be stuck with Packard bell`s - surely someone would buy them off you?