Which AV AMP to buy?? A confused NEWB!

Hello all,

Many moons ago I was very interested in AV equipment, although house and family soon took priorities and I couldn’t keep up interest, hence please treat me like NEWB and excuse any stupid comments I make. I’m now back in a position with some disposable cash and would like to treat myself to an AV system that provides an ultimate viewing experience, my problem being I just cannot decide on the right AV amp despite countless hours of review reading!!!!

My current rectangle living room is 3.4m x 7m (TV obviously going at one end and using the length of the room). With the set up of the long corner sofa unit and 3 seater, the ideal spot in the room for movie viewing will be directly facing the TV in the middle of the room at approx 4.8m distance. As I had my room re-skimmed I took to opportunity to wire in 6 speaker points (two high on front wall, two surround, two on rear wall).

My proposed system (which I want to buy this weekend whilst sales are still on) would be:

TV: Panasonic TX-P65VT30b

I’ve chosen this over an equivalent LED Samsung due to smoother picture quality, better 3D capabilities and viewing angles. I’m not bothered about the heat produced or the extra power consumption where an LED would win. I usually use the TV in the evening so am not fussed about the TV coping in bright sunlight. A projector would be out of the question as I can’t wire one in without making a mess.

Speakers: Kef KHT 3005 SE 5.1 system with 2 additional rears making it 7.1

I fell in love with these eggs years ago but never had the money to invest. Reading the What Hi Fi reviews I’m glad these later models are still up to scratch. I have some Eltax floor standers from my old system which are really punchy and produce good crisp sound despite their age and cost. I would look to use these two enabling me to have a 9 speaker system (obviously 4 fronts being; two floor standers and two high).

AV AMP: ???? (Proposed budget £600 – 1000 – would like to stay as low as possible given cost of above but don’t want to let down the system totally because of a few hundred pounds).

The main purpose of the Amp would be for HD movie viewing, not so much 3D due to content availability. Occasionally I may play the odd music video or listen to sky radio channels on it but not half as much as movies.

Connected to the Amp would be 4 HD sources (Sky HD, eMachine, PS3, Xbox 360), will also require the odd laptop to be plugged in via HDMI although that can go directly into the TV if needs be as the Panny comes with HMDI audio return to the AMP. I also have video recorder and Nintendo Wii (not sure whether to bother connecting these? However some analogue connection would help).

I do not care about wireless connectivity as I had a couple of Ethernet points wired in when doing up the living room. Also I do not care about DLNA as the eMachine will do it all and will play my DivX / MKV content.

The room is pretty big and in addition to the two ideal movie viewing seats mentioned above there are an addition 8 seats in the room for guests to sit on. I would like the amp to be able to throw the sound around the room so that visiting friends and family get ok/good sound (note I do appreciate it won’t be as good as the sweet spot where I will be sitting )

That is about as much info I can think of for now, apologies if this post is quite long, however from spending quite a lot of time on this website and others its evident that those who ask “which amp I should get” normally get a barrage of questions so I thought I would come prepared.