New Home - Time to Upgrade - Help!

[SpaceJams]

First off - great site - I have learned a lot from reading the articles and posts.

Second - help!

We just moved into a home built in 2001 that has ceiling speakers in the living room (2 front and 2 surround) and speakers in the study, kitchen, master, master bath, and back porch. The living room speakers are NHT IC2's which I am not familiar with. See attachment for living room layout.

I have about $3-4K to spend upgrading our very old stereo system into a 5.1 surround home theater system (minus the TV - we will upgrade our toshiba 27a33 later).

I would like to buy denon - we have had a denon system (dra 335r) since 1990 and it has worked great.

I would like the system to also connect to the computer to stream all of our audio files and play them throughout the house.

I am just not sure where to place the money. The denon 4306 is very appealing because of the ethernet card - but I don't need to spend $$ on HDMI - I will wait until the standard settles out and upgrade later. I definitely need a sub and a center speaker, a new receiver, and new cd and dvd player. I don't know if I should also consider spending money to replace the ceiling speakers. Advice on where to start looking???

SpaceJams

 

[SpaceJams]

What would be my options for connecting my computer to the denon 3805?

 

[SpaceJams]

Another bit of information is that I do own an Ipod. But, I use it in the car and at work. One of the reasons for the computer to receiver connection is for my wife who is at home during the day (I am lucky to have a wife encouraging factor).

 

[mytzen]

If you have a wireless router you can connect your receiver to your computer through a wireless media player.
There are many companies that make them but here are two from Dlink.
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=318
This one has HDMI as well
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=438

 

[SpaceJams]

mytzen - thanks for the input - the wireless media player looks like a good solution. One question - what would be the quality difference between the RCA connections vs the optical/coax digital connections? Is the receiver doing the processing with the digital connections vs. the media player doing the processing with the RCA connections?

Thanks for answering a newbie question

 

[mytzen]

I would use one of the digital connections for audio as it will give you higher quality sound.
I am not sure about the processing but I would assume that the receiver would do it.