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I don't know - maybe I got lucky with the Durabrand thing. I usually agree with the majority opinion on the Amazon reviews, so I was really surprised at how little I liked it. I left it in Maine when I moved to Montana, or I'd still be using it. It's no longer on the market. I paid $250 for this, so I expected a lot better. Another good thing is that this product was easy to repackage. (By contrast, I couldn't crank my Durabrand unit or it was WAY too loud). Also, I had to crank it to "max volume" just to get it to a normal listening level.
The great thing is that Amazon has such a fantastic returns policy, though. I didn't really like this Sony. By contrast, I paid $40 at Wal Mart 3 years ago for a surround sound system by Durabrand that blew this thing away. I am returning it. You can't buy it anymore, or even anything similar to it. The voices were really muddy. I just clicked "return," printed out a UPS shipping label, and I'm set. So, no loss, really.
Being a long time, MULTI-purchase customer of Amazon, this left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I doubt I'll do buisness here again.So, long story short, i'd avoid the HTCT 100 and spend the extra money on the HTCT 500. No joke, no exageration.So, I boxed it back up, and we sent it back.
The one main complaint was the lack of pure volume, but then I'd read another review that would say volume was sufficient.Totally confused, I decided to take a chance. I purchased the Sony HTCT 100 after doing tons of online research.
It was a slight upgrade from the TV's speakers, and that's it. I ordered off Amazon, got free shipping (the only reason I went with Amazon), and waited.
It arrived within a week, hooked it up (very easy using HDMI cables), and was totally disappointed. Amazon dinged me $25 to ship it back to them (which I can understand), but they also made me eat the origional "free shipping", $25, so in the end I ate $50.
That's what I'm thinking of getting, but I don't want to eat even more money if I don't like it.
The sound bar does just what I wanted. The sound for the movies is wonderful.
So we just bought a new house, and while the "Man Cave" is under construction, we needed a sound solution when we mounted our 46inch over the fireplace.Not interested in it being our primary Home Theater experience long term, we wanted something that would not make the living room into a tv room. In researching the soundbar systems, I loved the idea of this one because of the hdmi inputs.I can tell you that the dialog is more clear at low volumes than my Onkyo 7.1 system.For the price, I could not believe how well this little product does.Its been months now, and we are still very happy with the product.Warning, only use digital audio sources via hdmi with this product. I would not even thing about connecting anything else to it.Also, a common issue seems to be extending the range between the sub and the soundbar.Buy a common serial cable extension, and as long as you are using digital signal, it works great.I added a 25 foot extension, ran the cables through the floor, and the sound is super close to what it was without. You may have to turn it up one or two more levels, but thats it.
For such a small lower end system, the sound is acceptable for a medium size room. It doesn't compare to a dedicated surround sound system with separate speakers so dont expect the world when buying this. Great thing is the easy setup and ability to hookup all your common components in a cinch. I have the blu ray player, the DVR and the ipod connector setup with this unit and am overall happy with the sound. But you dont need to run wires across the room, install speakers on walls blah blah. All in all, a decent purchase.
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