I came to the realization last night, that I am a very lucky guy. I am in desperate need of a new receiver. My current one is a couple year old Kenwood (one of the first models that they put out that included DTS decoding). It has recently been shutting down in the middle of movies. Not only when being played at loud volumes, but just whenever. I have to power down and back up to get it running again. This happened about 10 times during MIB 2 (which I didn't really care for) last night.

So why am I lucky? Well, I told my wife that I need to get something new, and she agreed. I told her that I wanted to spend either around a grand, or go "all out", and spend around 4K. What was her reaction? "Spend the money. You don't want to settle for something you won't be happy with for very long." Whoa! After considering my options, and seeing what was available at both price points, I have decided to stay with my $1000.00 budget. This leads me to another reason why I am lucky. As I was checking out the various receivers and seperates that are currently available, I realized that I only needed to spend about a grand. I was very happy with the Denon 3803, which I will probably end up buying. I am lucky because, even though I heard differences between my two price points, and that there were certain advantages I would miss out on, (more inputs, options, fancy remotes, etc.) I was very satisfied with what I heard from the Denon. It makes me feel good that I can recognize the differences, and still be able to see the benefits of the cheaper item. Now that we (my wife and I) are both making good money (myself as a programmer, her as an engineer), I have been thinking a lot recently about how much is too much in any purchase. If I can afford to buy a $500,000 house, should I? What if I can be perfectly happy in a $300,000 house (not likely if you know San Diego R/E)? If I can afford a $45,000 car, should I get it, and would it be wrong of me to do so? By wrong, I don't mean to say that I think that buying expensive things is wrong, but instead, I mean it as a personal question of whether I can live with that decision. Can I live perfectly happily knowing that I own things that are less that I could have purchased? Yes! My happiness lies elsewhere, and while owning great home theater gear is fun, but in the end, it is nothing when I weigh it against the truly important things in my life; my beautiful and caring wife, my two sons (I have a 7 year old genius and a 2 year old with Downs syndrome), and my faith.

I hope that I don't sound preachy, but I felt like this would be a proper forum to express my feelings. I think that a lot of what Outlaw stands for, as well as many of you in this forum, is that you don't need to buy the "best" and the most expensive. If you can be satisfied and happy with spending less than you can afford, then why not?



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Benjamin King
benjaminking@yahoo.com