Customer Ratings & Reviews

A 5.1+ receiver with some shelf speakers and separate sub & center speakers would be ideal... But if you need a DVD player and want to eliminate the stereo component aspect to slim down your home theater environment, and if you want to keep the cost way, way down on replacing (not upgrading) your home theater system, this is a good deal. It takes a while to figure out all the options and selections when trying to configure the sound how you want it, since the decoders all produce different ranges and effects. The Dolby settings kill what little mids you're getting, as usual, so the best setting I've found is called A.F.D. Multi. The Best Buy description says the system comes with "DTS-ES Discrete 6.1, DTS-ES Matrix 6.1, DTS 96/24 and DTS NEO:6" as additional decoders, but that's NOT what it comes with. The non-Dolby decoders are titled "A.F.D. (Auto Format Direct) Standard", "A.F.D. Multi", and "2-Channel Stereo". In my opinion, AFD Multi is the best setting for normal television viewing and even when listening to music. The mids problem is pretty bad. So bad that it sounds like your typical computer speakers, but just a tad bit fuller sounding. To remedy this I bought a pair of Sony B3000 shelf speakers for the left & right channels... MUCH better sound! Got the ever-so-important mids back with a warmer sound. The DVD player is great. Watched Blade Runner on a 32" 720p Panasonic and the picture is pretty good. Upconversion seems to work well. There's a setting for television aspect ratio, so remember that when you're trying to get the resolution correct on a 16:9 display, or you might want to throw it out the window at first. Everything comes with an iPod dock now, so if you have an iPod, whoopee. I don't, but now I have two iPod docks... I think these corporations are trying to tell me something. How about an interchangeable, cross-platform (Zune, Zen, etc) dock with adapters? This is starting to look like an anti-trust issue...

To get the sound out of all speakers, you must play a dvd. You can not listen to music through all of the speakers.

Bought this to pair up with our new LCD TV....super easy set-up to guide you with proper placement of speakers. Good sub-sound for the price. Lots of features.