How much does a worthwhile home theatre system cost?
Rod Easdown reports. There are entire truckloads of home theatre systems priced under $1000 and they’re a pretty tempting deal: amplifier, DVD player, five speakers and subwoofer for less than a grand is a bargain. Some of them yield surprising performance, too. Others, well, not so much. But here’s the odd thing: lots of people who buy them, even those who are totally delighted by them, replace them in reasonably short order. And when they do, they spend a lot more. Maybe the cheap system has not only whetted their appetite for home theatre but has also shown up the shortcomings. Geoff Haynes is audio visual manager at Tivoli Hi-Fi, a shop with a long history in premium audio, and when we invited him to nominate the cheapest home cinema system he figured would give a worthwhile result, we weren’t quite sure what we’d get. The definition of “worthwhile” at Tivoli is, after all, probably different from yours and mine. As it turned out, Mr Haynes kept his feet firmly on the ground. He st
