Price Paid:  $177.00 from Military Post Exchan

Summary:
I installed this Home Theater in a box for a friend of mine tonight. MSRP on this small system is $300.00, he got it for only $177.00. That being said for such a small budget system it does alot of things well. It has 60 watts X 5, plus 100 watts for the 8" passive sub. It sports Dolby Digital, DTS, and Pro-Logic 2. It has a VCR & a DVD player built in to the unit. The speakers are pretty well built although the are no tweeters in the speakers, just weezer cones. The look is very stylish and melts away into the decore. He mates this with a Samsung TXN3071WHF 30" HDTV widescreen. And the remote runs everything. For set up I used my AVIA Test DVD, and my Radio Shack anolog sound meter, and tape measure. I had to crank the volume up all the way to get the levels to come up to 75 DB. I placed the sub in the right front corner out about two feet from the back wall. The rest of the small speakers were placed in there common Home Theater placement. The room is about 9'X 12'. Now onto DVD listening. I did no listen to any Music as the speakers only had 2 3/4" cones, and thought it would be unfare to judge a system on music content when it was created for Movies. I first popped in Fith Eliment (Supper Bit version). I selected the DTS sound track and pushed play. Now I am very familar with the Deva chapter on this movie. Now my system has over $15,000.00 and six powerd subwoofers in it, so I will not compare it to any of my equipment. For the money spent I exerienced a true surround effect, bass I could feel, and that was not boomy. DVD performance was not as good as my playstation 2 on the same TV in my second smaller Home Theater. But not bad at all for the price paid. It's like I told my freind if you like what you hear why spend more!

Happy Listening Gary Bitters

Strengths:
Price, looks, many features

Weaknesses:
No progresive scan for DVD, no digital audio input for HDTV set top Box. No tweeters.

Similar Products Used:
None this small.