If I asked you what the three most important things in your home were, what would be your answer? To me, they would certainly be sofa, bed and home entertainment system.
Sofa is very important because it can freshen up the entire living room and provides a comfortable place for the family to sit in. Bed is definitely important too because it will affect our quality of sleep. Lastly, a home will never be complete without a home entertainment system. Do you agree?
When we moved into our current apartment six years ago, we were tight in budget and thus, purchasing of furniture and system had to be scaled down. We settled with some mid-range sofa, beds and home entertainment system.
Thankfully, we’ve also been somewhat prudent in the last few years to have chalked up sufficient savings to clear out our outstanding home loan, and still have a good amount in our savings. So, our plan now is to slowly upgrade the furniture and system in our current apartment.
And we start off with our home entertainment system!
Purchasing a high quality home entertainment system is important because it will ensure that we have a powerful sound from our TV. Well, that’s what everyone says. To me, I need a system with smartphone connectivity as the previous system that we bought 6 years ago didn’t have that capability.
Ever since we installed our new Pioneer home entertainment system, we turned our living room into a world-class theatre! And the best thing is – we’ve been staying home a lot more now. Why waste money on movie tickets when we’ve got the best right here at our home? We really enjoy watching movies together as a family and at the comfort of our home.
And that’s probably the most stress-free activity to do with the family, considering how packed the shopping malls are these days, the hassles of hunting for car park lot, and the inconvenience in taking a public transport with kids if you don’t drive.
Edison dislikes cinema because it is dark. That’s another reason why we should upgrade our home entertainment system so that we can continue to enjoy the latest cinema releases at the comfort of our home.
Our new Pioneer home entertainment system comprises:
- VSX-923-K AV Receiver
- BDP-160 Blu-Ray 3D System
- S-11 Speaker Systems
- S-51W Powered Subwoofer
When the system was delivered to our home, we excitedly opened up all the boxes. There are so many components in the system, and everything was nicely wrapped. We’ve planned to set it up all by ourselves, but at the end, we failed miserably. Not because of its complexity, but more on our inexperience is putting up a surround sound system.
So, we called Pioneer and the next day, they sent an expert and had everything wired up nicely for us. Phew.
VSX-923-K is an excellent AV receiver for our home theatre system with 135 Watts of clear audio reproduction across 7 channels. It has smartphone connectivity and is ready to pass through 4K Ultra HD video signals to produce the highest quality picture available today.
It has built-in AirPlay too. AirPlay (previously called AirTunes when it was for audio only) is a proprietary protocol stack/suite developed by Apple that allows us to stream music, video and slideshows to devices that have the AirPlay feature.
This is how our AV receiver looks like. This video is from Pioneer’s website. I can’t find the exact same model, but this one is the closest to the one that we get.
Since VSX-923-K is technically a receiver, it also serves as a high quality radio and conduit for playing DVD’s, CD’s and MP3 players. As mentioned, we also got the Pioneer Blu-Ray 3D System, subwoofer and speakers along with the receiver to create our own surround-sound entertainment system.
Close-up view on one of the little speakers
The subwoofer
The speaker system comes in five speakers. The long one is placed on top of our blu-ray player, and the four little ones are put at the four corners near our flat screen TV. The subwoofer is quite big, so we tentatively put it on the floor now.
Our boy likes to line-up his LEGO figures and toy cars on the AV receiver
So far, we’ve been more than impressed with the features and sound quality of this system. It has several surround-sound settings for us to choose in different circumstances, which can be easily toggled once a movie begins. We can choose the sound that we like best, and then sit back and relax.
The sound is truly surround-sound, and it reverberates around our living room and right behind us. What I like best is that the sound is rich, deep and clear, and with a tone that is just right! The system produces high quality sound no matter what the volume is. It emits soft piano tinkling as effortlessly as it replicates eardrum pounding explosions. It’s simply amazing!
The interface is quite easy to use. There are functional buttons on the player itself, as well as the remote control. Even though there are quite a lot of buttons on the remote control, but it’s quite easy to get used to it. Even a 6 year-old kid like Edison knows how to use the remote control now.
The 3D blu-ray player allows us to play ultra high definition videos, and it also has the Wi-Fi Direct feature where we can directly connect our smartphones and tablets without having to use a wireless router. It can never be easier to stream our favourite YouTube videos to our TV now!
Still, there are several more functions in this system that we’ve yet to explore. We’ll share more about it when we go along. If you’re looking for a high quality home entertainment system that is fairly affordable, do check out Pioneer. I’m sure it will not disappoint you.
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