Money

I just came up from my basement after listening to Money from Dark Side of the Moon on my new (to me) AV receiver. I've never had any fancy stereo equipment before - I couldn't justify the expense since, with my hearing, I can't really tell the difference between a tape and a CD. However, last week I happened to find an 'offer I couldn't refuse'.

My wife works at an insurance company and recently an electronics store they insure had a claim when some water leaked from the roof onto the display area. The insurance company paid the claim and took the now un-sellable merchandise from the insured. They then offered all that equipment in a silent auction to the employees. There was a lot of fantastic stuff there - but the mantra is 'buyer beware' as this stuff is salvage from an insurance claim.

We bid $175 on a Sony Home Theatre system (the DAV-FX900W) which retails for $1200 (Canadian) and won it. Great! Now there are a few things missing that I didn't know about ahead of time:

• no remote control - I have a Harmony 880 already
• no AM or FM antennas - I don't listen to the radio very often outside of my car
• no 'table' speaker stands, just floor stands - I'm going to mount the speakers on the walls anyway
• no 'calibration mic' for simple audio configuration - I'll do it the 'hard' way
  
• no surround amp/IR receiver - this is the one that hurts a little

A key feature of this particular system is that the rear surround speakers don't need a wire back to the main unit. Instead Sony has come up with some infrared way of transmitting the audio information. However, to make this work, the left rear speaker needs a power source and an IR receiver cable, neither of which I have. I've looked into getting the part from a Sony service department but it looks like it will be more than I paid for the whole system to this point. So I guess I'll have to have the speaker wires routed to the back of the room somehow.

Getting back to where I just was, I set up the system in the basement this evening after the kids went to bed, just to test it out and the first CD I put in was Dark Side of the Moon. Now I can't wait to move it up to the family room and hook it up to the rest of the components - but that's going to wait until Christmas (my present just came a little early).