First question – I have my eye on this amp (Sony STR-DN1030). Its £500ish in the UK but $449 in the States. The other half is travelling there soon. Will the US version be any different to the UK version i.e. will it work here (apart from a plug adaptor)?

Second question is even more long winded. I am in the stone age at the moment with a 13 year old CRT in the lounge. This is being replaced with a Sony 46Hx923 later this week. My so called “cinema” system at the moment is a Jamo DVR50. I’ve been happy with this but obviously its a little ‘old hat’. I am ASSUMING that I can just wire in the surround speakers (5.1) that came with the DVR50 to the new amp mentioned above? Then it would be a case of connecting the tv, new blu ray player and PS3 to the amp to utilise the existing speakers? I could possibly also connect the old DVR50 Dvd player (though this is scart based)?

Does all this make sense? Will it work? If the DVR50 is currently connected by Scart and the new amp doesn’t have scart – is there another option to connect it? Will the red, yellow and blue connectors work?

Any advice appreciated as this is all new to me.

Cheers

Amp – it’s a receiver, yes, with FM tuner built it? Pretty sure the FM band is split up differently in the US so the tuner won’t work. They run on 110V rather than the UK’s 240V but most electronics can now handle either but worth checking. Also you’ll need to wire on a new plug. Other than that….

Jamo DVR50. A *lot* of those all in one systems have speakers with a strange impedance, and the subwoofers are *usually* passive (ie the amp is not in the speaker). AV amps expect to deal with subs with their own amplifiers. Very difficult to say…

No point connecting the DVD player – a blu ray player will play DVDs as well (though worth getting a multi-region one or making sure you can multi region it yourself easily)

Thanks – good point about not bothering with the old DvD unit. The sub I think is active – has its own power source anyway – need to check that.

It won’t work in the UK – the US version is rated for 120V/60Hz only.

Also, it weights 9KG unboxed which might come as a surprise at check-in and even more so at customs. (“Excuse me, Sir, but could you explain again why you took your amplifier on holiday?”).

OK – USA purchase cancelled. Thanks

Re: the amp, if you’re looking at around £500, then Yamaha or Onkyo are your real choices. Both keep swapping best buy between them in the reviews. A mate has a Yamaha from several years ago, but it was going to be the Onkyo. Both have a number of HDMI inputs, which give upscaling, not that you’re likely to need it with a Bluray. I think you’ll need decent speakers, the KEF satellite/sub combo is superb. It’s not worth skimping on a system, they last for years, you want it to be pretty future-proof, so as many HDMI and optical inputs as you can get, really. Huge amounts of power are irrelevant, unless you live in a really big detached house!
My own amp is a Yamaha, about eight or nine years old, just prior to HDMI, and I could really use several, but I use optical from my DVD, and a Minidisc, as well as my Mac Mini.

Also the PS3 is a bluray player and upscales DVDs fairly well and does 3d if you have the software update, so no blu-ray player required.

So it should just go:

PS3–>AMP–>TV

Speakers connected to amp

If your current speakers don’t work out but you like Jamo, and you can’t stretch to keffs, check these out . I’ve been very happy with mine
http://www.whathifi.com/review/jamo-a102hcs5

Thanks all – due to the boring budget constraints, I’ll give the existing speakers a pop and then buy some new ones anyway!! Cheers for the help