With kids, it’s rare that I get to enjoy the great home theater experience in the main room. The TV in there is old (55” SDTV, 10+ years old) and will soon be due for replacement. When that day comes, it’s hard to justify anything hard core because I never to get watch TV in there and the 5.1 system mostly goes to the likes of The Incredibles or NEMO.

That being said, I watch almost all movies in the bedroom on a 37” 1080p HD LCD. It’s a solid experience, using a Sony 5-disc HDMI player that upconverts to 1080i (yeah, no P, bummer I know). The sound however sucks. I use the built-in speakers and it is just lame all around.

I recently discovered the Yamaha YSP-1100. It’s a 42-speaker bar that sits until your TV and provides a theater surround sound from a single position. The box has some video inputs and switching, and eliminates the need for a receiver, wires and a ton of speakers. The system seems cool, but with no support for HDMI, it seems like this awesome product is due a refresh in the spring (yeah, even though it just came out in September).

If this box had three HDMI inputs, at least one component video input (converted to ride along the HDMI output to the TV), I would have one in a heartbeat. That way I could hook the DVR (Motorola STB w/HDMI output), DVD Player, HTPC (w/nVidia HDMI output), and PS2 to a single box and feed the need on the TV Monitor. Until then, I’m going to have to wait until it gets better because the current config isn’t quite gravy.

FYI: Gravy === The SHIT! :)