Well after I ordered I thought... hmmm, Philips, is that like the "Philips audio" I sometimes hear good things about?
Anyway I know the name and have never heard anything bad about it, just not owned any of their stuff AFAIK.
And having the option to continue to use RCA jacks for external audio was really what sealed the deal. All I have in there is a small bookshelf stereo, the CD player on it went wonky a few years back but the amp and radio are still good and it's got decent enough speakers even if it's just the old two-speaker stereo sound and not anything fancy. So I moved it out there just to run the TV sound through for movies and stuff. In a small apartment it's adequate, it's not like I need (or want) to blow the walls out.
So at least I won't have to upgrade my audio in that room until I recover from this expense.
I was looking at soundbars last night though, supposedly they deliver the same experience as having a surround-sound set up only without half a dozen pieces of equipment scattered around the room. (One of the reasons I haven't upgraded is that I just don't have anywhere to put everything that comes with that kind of system.) Anybody use those, do they actually work as advertised? If so that would be an upgrade I could see going for in the future.
Oh, and I got the old TV out successfully. I did end up taking it apart, and my excellent bro-in-law came over with a dolly and we got the heaviest bit of innards out that way. The rest could just be hand-carried to the dumpster. I don't think we could've gotten the entire TV on the dolly anyway, even if we did getting it down the stairwell would have been iffy... so it all worked out.
