Advice on buying hd theater

[rykr]

I'm looking to move from WMC to Sage 7 and need some advice. I'll have 4 tv watching points (theater, living room, master bedroom, and kids bedroom). I'm thinking of getting 3 hd theaters, one in each place except kids bedroom. I'll put one there eventually too probably.

I'm thinking of using a hd theater in my theater just for simplicity. I sometimes now have to login to my htpc using vnc just to make sure the system volume is set, etc (no wireless keyboard on htpc). Plus I want to use Vail as a home server/backup so using a hd theater would allow a single computer to work here.

I am interested in ripping a few blu-rays and be able to play them anywhere in the house (but the theater is the only place that will be able to decode dts and it's variants). I'm also concerned about remote controls. Single remote control at each place is important.

So my question is HD200 off eBay or HD300 new? I'm aware of the dts downmixing the hd300 does but I know that you can "encode" your blu-ray rips to work on hd200. Also, if it costs me $50 to get a single remote that works with the hd200 then I might as well get 300s.

So, any suggestions on which to buy?

Thanks

[Brent94Z]

Well, I've got two HD300s but have never had an HD200 so I can't compare the two but can tell you that I have seen more than a few HD200s on eBay where the reason they stated for getting rid of them is because they upgraded to the HD300. :D

For the $50 difference, I'd go with the HD300s. Don't get me wrong though... if somebody offered me an HD200 for like $40 I'd buy it but for $100 vs $150, I'd go for the HD300 personally.

Also, new beta firmware just released improves the UI resolution of only the HD300 so this is something else to consider.

[sam99]

one quick comment is that the newer programmable button remotes are for sale for $14 each from the sage store, quite a bit less than $50. So if money is a factor.

And unless you are a hardcore "tweaker", then just go with the HD300 over an htpc client. I did almost two years ago (when child number two was born) and never regretted it because my computer time vs children time became much more heavily skewed towards the children. You can spend a lot of time fiddling with your server or personal pc to fill any geek needs without having to find the time for client fiddling too.

[rykr]

Sam

I hear ya on the extenders. They do make it simple! Thanks for the input to everyone!