Anyone have a cool home theatre/speaker setup they would recommend? I need to upgrade basically everything I have. Right now I have:
Downstairs - hooked up to TV: Extremely old Sony DVD player that came with 5.1 surround - this is one of those DVD and theatres in a box that likely only cost $199 new and that was 10 years ago. Sound isn't very good - My TV also needs replacing, it's about 8 years old but the greys are no good and it's starting to get cloudy around the edges/
Upstairs in my music room/office/dog's room, I have an older Sony receiver and two 4 foot tall Polk Audio speakers (these I inherited from my dad). I use this receiver to listen to my iPod and turntable, but they're in my office and not at all portable or wireless. I believe the receiver was a high end one but is old to the point that there are no HDMI input/outputs. A lot of the times I use this to listen to music upstairs - I just put one of the big speakers in the doorway and blast it out.
I also have a "wireless speaker" that is not bluetooth, it has a little dongle thing that plugs into my iPod and then it transmits wirelessly to the speaker. This is the most portable speaker I have but it still requires to be plugged in - right now I move it all over the house or outside depending where I want to be listening, which is a pain.
Basically, I want better speakers for my television, a more portable way of listening to music in different rooms of the house and also outside. I'm thinking for downstairs I could go the sound bar route, and this would be able to talk to my TV and bluetooth devices (i.e. Spotify on my phone), but I'd also need to ensure it has a Aux input for my Ipod. That still would leave outside and upstairs. Would it make sense to get a receiver somewhere and then speakers all over the house and outside that are all run through a central source? This is how it was in my parents house, but that was before the days of bluetooth and always having a phone in my pocket.
What about the Amazon Echo, or other bluetooth speakers? Is it just as simple as having bluetooth speakers in the areas I want them and selectinh which one(s) I want active from my phone?
Anything simpler, or that I'm missing?