Saturday, March 21, 2015

3D Home Theater Great for a first-step into surround sound, but be wary of incompatible devices.

3D Home Theater Great for a first-step into surround sound, but be wary of incompatible devices.


Unlike other all-in-one setups, I appreciate that the speaker and subwoofer connections are all standard rather than proprietary, so I can swap them out for other purposes should the need arise, or I can upgrade them later.

On the software side of setup, Wifi was quick since the menus are easy to read, same wth bluetooth and NFC.

On the hardware side, the speaker wires are color coded, and the rear speakers are wireless, so placing them was a breeze. The hardest part was measuring each speaker's distance, but that's more the fault of my tape measurer. I set the volume levels after measuring and was treated to room-filling surround, and it's excellent - much better than I'd have expected for the price. The only shortcoming is the subwoofer - it's decent, but it's also passive. For soundtracks you may think it's nice, but you won't feel that "boom" from an action movie.

Video quality is superb in both 2D and 3D, and even if your collection isn't 100% blu-ray, you're still in for a treat as the support for DVD is fantastic. The 2:2 cadence detection and scaling are flawless, making my DVD's prettier than I'd ever seen. The disc spins quietly as well. All around it's just a top-notch blu-ray player.

Other than the subwoofer, the biggest issue is the lack of HDMI input as others have noted, giving you less options to connect various a/v devices (consoles being my main concern). However, my TV has HDMI ARC, which lets my TV act as a central hub for all HDMI devices, so I had no issues. Everything's plugged into my TV and playing audio in beautiful 5.1 surround.

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