It’s been about 14 years since I have upgraded my home theater. Well, that’s partially true. We did buy a 37″ HDTV back in 2006 after my little 27″ died. Before that however, the last piece of equipment added to the system was a new Yamaha receiver back in 2001. The following is the story about a boy named Trevor and his journey to breathe new life into his home theater system.
My credit has been shot for quite a few years. Part of it was that my ex-girlfriend racked up quite a bit on my credit cards and then left me, and part of it was my fault after being in a depression for a year after that. Long story short, I fell behind, got into a debt management program, and paid off all of my debt in 6 years. I have been dept free for over 2 years now. So while at work on Saturday night scanning the store, I was curious if I would qualify for a store card. Store branded cards are typically easier to get then a Visa or Mastercard. Now, I had a card with my store back in the day but that was one of the ones I fell behind on and wasn’t sure if that would still be on my credit report. I remember reading somewhere that blemishes on your credit report fall off after 7 year, so when I got home at 1am I hopped online and gave it a shot. Much to my surprise I was instantly approved with a pretty generous credit line. I was rather proud of myself for fixing my credit enough to qualify for a card. I was not in any hurry to put anything on the card…that is until I got to work on Sunday morning.
While I was putting out some signage I noticed that TVs had 12 months 0% financing on them. We have been talking about getting a new TV for about a year now since ours has been slowly dying. The internal tuner doesn’t work, the power button doesn’t work, it’s not full HD (720p max) and the HDMI input goes bonkers every once and a while by screaming into the room. So, while I was walking to and fro all day, I decided to look at TVs. Out of all the TVs, 2 caught my eye as having the features I wanted without the features that I didn’t want. I wanted a full HD, 50″ LED TV with as many HDMI ports as I could get. I DID NOT want a Smart TV since I would be paying extra money for apps on a TV that I would never use. I had narrowed it down between a Panasonic and a Sharp. Both of which were the same price. I was personally leaning towards the Sharp but I decided to bring Jess up to take a look as well.
The next day we headed to my store and I grabbed one of the Home Theater guys. I told him what I was after and the TV I was interested in. He flat out told me that that would have been the TV he would have recommended. After checking what my employee price on it, I was sold. This is the TV we purchased.
We had also talked about getting rid of the surround sound system for a soundbar to streamline things. Having both of us there I asked him to show us a few. I was not impressed at all. I told Jess that I didn’t think it was a good choice and we just purchased the TV.
That night after getting home I had to unhook the old TV and hook the new TV up. What I learned was not good. The old TV had totally different inputs then the new one and I had rigged everything top work with the old TV. Everything would need to be redone. Not a big deal, except for the fact that I did not have an extra digital input on my receiver to accommodate the audio output from the TV which would feed sound from the HDTV antenna and the Mac Mini. Looking discouraged, Jess asked me what was wrong. I told her the situation about the receiver and she laughed saying she was surprised that I didn’t want to look at a new receiver after I nixed the idea of a soundbar. I told her I didn’t think that was even in the cards and she told me that if we were going to upgrade the system we should do it right. She then gave me permission to buy a new receiver.
I had a therapy appointment the next day and while there I talked my therapist about the conversation about the receiver. I told her that even though my wife gave me permission that I would feel guilty getting it. She told me that I shouldn’t feel guilty and to go do something nice for myself for once. So after our session, I took a ride to my store and picked up a new receiver. It’s a Yamaha RX-V337 (brand of my choice) and it’s a damn nice receiver. It’s has 4 4K HDMI passthroughs and more then enough power to push out ear bleeding sound. It even comes with a microphone that auto-calibrates all of the speakers for you. Pretty cool! Here is the new receiver.
While I was there I was a bad boy and also picked up a new Apple TV 3 since the old Apple TV 2 we had kept randomly rebooting an only did 720P.
All in all it was a great upgrade. The system sounds great and the TV looks fantastic! The nice thing about everything was not only did we get the upgrades, but with my discount, we saved about $300 on everything. Not too shabby at all!
