New theater from the ground up.

[CrazyCanuck75]

I have always wanted to build an impressive home theater but could never afford it until now. I am looking for suggestions on processors. I do however have a few requirements:
1) that it be around $5000.00 (new or used) or less.
2) that it be HDMI 1.4 compliant (3D)
3) that it be simple, I want it for my theater only so I don't really want multi-zones. Also I don't want a million useless DSP modes.
4) Upgradeable, I don't want to buy something that cannot be upgraded via the Internet. So future resistant (nothing is future proof).
5) would also be nice if it had balanced interconnects.

If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it.

 

[bandphan]

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?homeproc&1289249904&/Anthem-D-2-w/ARC-like-new

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?homeproc&1287783904&/Anthem-D2v-Surround-Processor

 

[krzywica]

Yeah D2V hands down. I have seen and heard what Warp's D2V can do many times and its the best preprocessor I have ever seen/heard. Other options would be the new Marantz 7005 if you can wait a few weeks/months. Its not as expensive as the Anthem, but on paper it almost matches the feature set.

 

[CrazyCanuck75]

Thanks guys

The Anthem have definitely caught my eye, but is the HDMI 1.4? I am having difficulties finding all the specs on that model. Call me crazy or nuts, the Marantz could be the best fit for the options I want and the price is great but I want my theater to be made up of components that aren't made by mainstream manufacturers. I loved my old Denon AVR 2800 and so did a few of my buddies. We all ended up with the same receivers, I want to try to avoid this from happening again.

 

[jostenmeat]

The Anthem have definitely caught my eye, but is the HDMI 1.4? I am having difficulties finding all the specs on that model. Call me crazy or nuts, the Marantz could be the best fit for the options I want and the price is great but I want my theater to be made up of components that aren't made by mainstream manufacturers. I loved my old Denon AVR 2800 and so did a few of my buddies. We all ended up with the same receivers, I want to try to avoid this from happening again.

Hahaha. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I foresee that any 3D capable BD player worth having will have dual HDMI outputs for years to come. A company like Panasonic has this on all their players already (3 diff models already?), so that our own HDMI 1.0, 1.1, 1.3, etc, processors are not instantly outdated. The extra cost comes with an HDMI cable, which is about $5 for a good one from Monoprice.

I would think the above is a small price to pay to have something as nice as the D2V. The only other tech that I would want to compare with the ARC is the upcoming Audyssey XT32.