Wireless Surround Sound System

Caveats: This HTIB is connected to a 720P 42″ Panasonic TV purchased in late 2007. I have never previously owned a HTIB, so I have nothing to compare it to apart from stereo systems. Used in a medium-sized living room.
I possess average-to-high tech savviness. Several reviewers have had much grief with the wireless rear speakers. Mine worked out of the box, but only after I remembered to insert the digital transmitter into the main unit. I have been drinking throughout this review.

Setup: Assembly and setup were reasonably simple. Connections were very clearly marked. I may or may not have successfully used the auto speaker setup microphone due to my own stupidity.
The sound levels of each speaker are easy to adjust manually, however. Unlike other reviewers, I was able to play normal TV broadcasts through the system speakers by connecting the optical audio out on my cable box to the digital optical audio in (“D-IN 1″) with a Toslink cable (more below!).

Sound: I’m no audiophile, but the system sounds great to my ear whether playing music from an iPod/Pandora, movies on DVD/BD’s, or even Youtube. Full spectrum with excellent bass. The subwoofer really makes the room shake. It needs to be set pretty low most of the time.
The tiny rear speakers produce excellent ambient sounds during movies and hold their own if I use with other sources.

Picture: Bluray discs look very good, as expected, excellent in fact. Upscaled DVD’s also look very good.

Vieracast: You are doing yourself a serious disservice if you purchase this and don’t take advantage of the internet features available with this unit.
You’ll need to purchase a Panasonic DY-WL10 dongle (about today, weeks ago when I purchased) or a wired LAN connection, but there’s a ton of content out there that make it worthwhile.
In short, Vieracast is Panasonic’s proprietary internet streaming service. It currently offers Netflix, Youtube, Pandora (a music service), and a few lesser lights like Bloomberg news, Picasa, and a German news channel, Tageschau (wuh?). Fox Sports and Twitter are still “Coming Soon!”
The Vieracast interface is a little clumsy in appearance and makes annoying chiming sounds as you click between content.

It sometimes takes more than than one attempt to get started (could also be the fault of the dongle or my router or some other piece of hardware), but it’s dropped a connection exactly-only-once.

Regardless, a Netflix account alone makes Vieracast (no fee) worthwhile in view of the numerous and varied “Watch Instantly” offerings. Examples: My father came to the TV show “Lost” a few seasons late, so he recently bought the first few seasons on DVD to catch up.
Well, all but last season are currently available instantly on netflix.
More and more recent offerings are available, lots of kids’ stuff and documentaries, older classics . . . On a whim I googled a list of “the best movies of all time” and found that most of the top 15 were available for instant viewing (“Battleship Potemkim” – er, great!)

There are some negatives with Netflix. Unlike a DVD/BD, the streaming audio doesn’t appear to automatically separate to 5.1, but you can easily use the “surround” and “sound” buttons on the remote to choose the combination of speakers. Still blows your TV speakers away.

I found the video quality of streaming video on a 42″ plasma to be very good (and it transmits 16:9), but it’s not Bluray or even HD. But I’m also old enough to remember when TV nirvana was watching S-VHS on a 36″ tube set. If you’re rockin’ a 60″ set, sit three feet from the screen, and can’t remember the 80’s, your mileage may vary.

Youtube is rife with possibilities that I haven’t fully exploited, mostly because I haven’t had the patience to figure out my account settings for playlists and favorites on Youtube itself. A 12 year old should be able to do things stranger than i can imagine.
You enter your Youtube account name/password and your lists, etc. should appear. One cool thing I managed to do was create extensive playlists (e.g. old live Dead, Zeppelin, etc.) and put them on continuous play. This is very awesome. Video quality is obviously limited by the source (whateva), the sound too, but I’m listening to it right now and it’s pretty good.

Pandora radio is a great internet music service that I have on iPhone. Enter the name of an artist or genre and it will continuously play music from that artist/genre. It’s like an artist/genre specific radio station.
If you have a (free) account as I did, just enter username/password. Sound quality is excellent.

iPod dock: Excellent feature built into the main unit. The interface can be a little clumsy, however, lots of scrolling with the remote if you’re looking for That Particular Song. If you have playlists like the rest of the sane, no worries.

TV Broadcasts: As noted above, and in contrast to other reviewers, cable/satellite broadcasts can be played through the unit’s speakers with a Toslink cable (which costs less than a Big Mac).
I have a cablebox (HD with modern connections) and it took a little experimentation to get it to work. The unit’s instructions read like, well, stereo instructions, and were not particularly helpful. Each must find his own path, but I was easily able to play normal TV broadcasts through the system speakers by connecting the optical audio out on my cable box to the digital optical audio in (“D-IN 1″) with the Toslink cable.

FM radio: Does anyone really care? Well, if you’re so inclined, it receives FM transmissions pretty well, much better than my last (1998-ish) receiver, and has auto pre-sets available (just like a rental car!) Worked well. Also plays SD cards, another useless thing that these things all do. Useless unless you want to subject someone to a slide show, which was a peculiar form of torture back in the day.

Conclusion: This device sounds great and has opened up a whole new world of content on the TV. The four stars is for interface clumsiness, and the remote, which I don’t feel like reviewing but I don’t really like. You can’t go wrong with this unit at the current price point.

I was rather surprised by the bulk and solid construction of the satelites. I was expecting a plasticy glued together feel, but was quite pleased just upon opening the box. The satelites are about the size of the small version Bose satelite speakers, so the size was right. The sub was shockingly small being a little bigger than a shoebox (it looked bigger to me in the picture).

Testing them out in my established spots for my current setup, I tried music (I Ching Symphony) followed by a movie (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers). With the music, the sound was surprisingly spacious; however perhaps a bit airy and bright. The high ranged music flowed nicely considering the price of the setup.

The DVD was another stoy. In the DTS cut of LoTR, the sub all but begged for mercy. In the opening scene with Gandolf and the Balrog, the sub reminded me somewhat of the sounds you hear from an overzealous 16 year old kid’s car. In short, farty and shaky.

After some consideration, I decided to check the receiver settings. I noticed that the crossover was set to 100 hz. With the satelites bottoming at 120 hz, this is a problem. After bumping it up to 150 hz, I decided to try Star Wars Episode 1. The difference was huge. The roaring of the engines in the pod racer scene was rather exceptional. Noticing that this was a Dolby Digital edit, I decided to go back and try some DTS. Going back and forth between sound edits on several discs, I came to the conclusion that this system doesn’t get along with DTS. The encoding of the LFE (subwoofer channel) in DTS is just too low for the sub in this system. Dolby Digital had little or no trouble.

Overall, this is a hefty bang for the buck. The satelites/center are worth the price of admission. The sub is perhaps the weak link but it does the job. Considering the satelites connect directly to the receiver and all the money left over, a burlier sub could easily be substituted to create very respectable setup. The system as is would be worth at least 3 times as much as what Amazon offers it for. Considering the price, 5 stars is definitely not a stretch.

Tested with:
Pioneer VSX-D411 Receiver
Pioneer DV-578A DVD player
Room Size: Approximately 10′X 14′

In the box is an HDMI cable, 3…maybe 4 sets of different heights of legs, a remote (that had buttons on both front and back), a user manual that is bigger than my phone book.] and even hardware to wall mount it.

By the way the Sub is worthless if you’re looking for LOUD base that hits and knocks pictures off the wall.

I decided to adopt a set of AM6. People at the store told me that I may have to wait for 45 days. I think, that’s OK. But, I can’t live without some nice music for 45 days. Then, I placed my order for the AM6 and also brought home a pair of an inexpensive Bose 161. The 161 alone sounds very OK for music. Anyway, my receiver is Onkyo TX-SR605S. And my audio sort is the Mac mini optically connected to the Onkyo receiver. I could make my neighbors dance with this set. However, the 161 alone is no good for movies.

45 days later, I got the AM6. So, the pair 161 are now the back surround speakers. With the AM6, I got a 7.1 system. The first Onkyo automatic setup was great for the movies the floor and the walls were shaking. for some reasons, the floor and the walls were still shaking for music too. That is a little too much for me. The bass wasn’t like a strong punch. It was more like a really annoying subwoofer effect from the next room. I was a bit disappointed. However, a month later when I was playing around with the Onkyo remote control, I found that the Onkyo set volume level of subwoofer to -3. I manually changed it to +3. Now, it is a lot better for music. It does sound like what I heard in Bose showroom. The movie sound effect is still cool. I think, the reason that make Onkyo receiver set the volume level very low for Bose speakers, because Bose bass module is not exactly a subwoofer. It also produces some midrange sound, which could mess up Onkyo automatic speakers calibration. One more good thing that I like about the AM6 is, speaker cables are included. I don’t have to worry about what cabel should I use or how much do I have to pay more. But please note that, the center speaker of AM6 is identical with the satellite speakers. So, it could be better of a system that has a real center speaker.