Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #216 in Receiver or Amplifier
- Color: Black
- Brand: Sonos
- Model: PBAR1US1BLK
- Released on: 2013-03-05
- Dimensions: 3.33" h x
5.51" w x
35.43" l,
12.12 pounds
- Networking: Wireless
Features
- Sonos HiFi sound for your TV with nine amplified speakers
- Listen to all the music on earth - from any source
- Simple, single-cable setup
- Flexible, multiple position and orientation design for any room and TV
SONOS PLAYBAR TV Soundbar and Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music
Product Description
PLAYBAR’s nine-speaker design floods any room with super-realistic audio for games and movies, huge waves of live concert sound, and wireless streams of all the music on earth. And it all comes from one easy-to-use player that brings HiFi sound to your high-definition TV.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
57 of 64 people found the following review helpful.
I like Playbar, but it is not for everyone
By Eric Klein
This is addition to my Sonos enabled home, so you can also read my reviews of other Sonos products. Sonos makes amazing home audio solutions, so whenever I add a component, I always write a review...Summary : I was so excited by the concept of a Playbar. I have Sonos speakers in two other rooms of my house, but it is unfortunately not integrated in my two rooms with surround sound speaker systems. I would kill to have Sonos wireless music in those rooms, but seamlessly integrate with my existing A/V setups. That is what Playbar is for. Super exciting. While the setup experience and audio quality of Playbar is great and up to the usual Sonos quality bar, it unfortunately doesn't work with my Sharp Aqous TV, and I think that might be the tiny Achilles heel of this product. It probably works with most, but not every HDTV, due to a basic setup assumption. I love the Playbar concept, and it probably works great for most people!Review :I got this product to integrate into my main living room A/V experience. My LR is about 20'x16' with no separation from another 20'x16' dining room. Relatively big space to fill with audio. I've got a relatively generic 5 speaker setup, with no sub because everyone else in the house complains about the noise level when it is enabled ;-) I mounted my Sharp Aquos 46D62U on the wall, and ran HDMI and componentin-wall between a lower cabinet and the wall plate behind the Sharp. Pretty standard. I've got a number of HDMI sources running into a Onkyo amp, then one HDMI from the amp to the TV through the in-wall wiring. My goal in adding Playbar was to disable the existing room speakers, and use the Playbar as the audio source. I would get full Sonos integration plus audio from my existing PS3, Xbox 360, and AppleTV. Wee!The out of the box experience was mostly to Sonos's standard quality level. I've come to expect that setup is very easy, and it was. They've added the steps needed to check audio coming from your TV source, and to configure your remote control to change volume on the Playbar. This all worked well for me.The sound quality was also up to the high Sonos standards. I loved having my music collection seamlessly stream into my living room, finally. And as I'll explain in a minute, when I tested with an alternate TV, the audio quality for game (PS3, Xbox 360) and movie sources was quite good. I think for bigger rooms you'll want to add the Sonos Sub for depth, but for smaller rooms the sound was high quality and bright.There were two big gotchas that will not affect everyone, but affected me. I think it is important to understand them before purchasing a Playbar:1 - If you have an in-wall installation for your TV, adding/retrofitting Playbar into the environment is not hard, but requires some manual dexterity and a longer digital audio cable than ships in the box. Most people with an in-wall installation do not think of putting optical audio cables into the wall during the initial buildout. Audio was supposed to transfer via HDMI in the new world order. This means you have to difficultly get behind the TV (most of the time flush mounted), plug in an optical audio cable, then run this unsightly cable down from the TV to the Playbar. I went in-wall because I wanted a nice aesthetic, but that cable ruins the clean visual experience.The optical cable that ships with the Playbar is way too short for most runs from the back of a wall mounted TV to the Playbar. Most TVs have their connections in the back to one side (right, often), so you have to run the optical cable back to center, then straight drop it to the center of the Playbar where its connectors are. If you don't want an oddly angled cable running from the Playbar to the TV, this involves a few 90 degree bends, which adds to the required cable length. The Sonos supplied short optical cable was in no way long enough for this, but as a bit of an audio geek, I had extra optical cables of various lengths. If you don't have extra optical cables of longer length, be prepared to buy one to finish this install. This is a rare "fit and finish" miss for Sonos.2 - The basic premise of the Playbar solution is that you run all HDMI to the TV, then an optical audio cable from the TV to the Playbar. This is a huge assumption about the age of most people's TVs. New TVs have plenty of HDMI ports and the assumption that there is a working audio optical out is probably ok. What I learned is that my older (sold in 2006-2008 at high volume) but still good Sharp Aquos 46D62U has that optical audio out, but it was designed only for ATSC (over the air HDTV) audio. It is not a generic pass-through audio port. Translation, the Playbar does not work with my TV. But I had no way of knowing this when I got the Playbar. There is no list I could find of TVs that will not work with the Playbar, but I can guarantee these exist. It took me three hours of super geeking to learn all of this, buried in manuals and AVForum posts. In this way I'm not the average Sonos customer, as less of a geek would have gotten frustrated and taken something back well before this.I trust Sonos, and assume that the vast majority of TVs work with this digital audio pass-through model. I grabbed a newer Sony TV I had stored and hooked it up outside my home theatre room, and it worked well. Maybe mine is a rare case, but I wonder with less expensive or older HDTVs, will Playbar work every time. Hopefully FAQs will quickly appear documenting the few TVs that won't work with Playbar, so you don't have to order something that has a very low but possible chance of not working with your TV...All in all, I really love the Playbar concept, and wish, oh wish, it had worked in my main home theatre room. The sound quality is great and setup is a breeze. Now to convince my wife I need a new TV for the living room?!
56 of 65 people found the following review helpful.
Easy Install, Elegant Looks, & High Fidelity
By AreYouKidding?
We have a small 10'x12' game room for our Xbox 360 and Wii U. Each console is hooked up to a LG 47" LED TV. The video quality is fantastic but the sound left a lot to be desired. This "problem" needed a solution. I set four simple goals to address this.1) The system had to sound great.2) High Wife Acceptance Factor. :)3) I did not want to run a separate A/V receiver. I simply don't have the room.4) I did not want to run wires under the baseboards or carpet.To achieve these goals I decided to build a complete Sonos Home Theater System, with the new PLAYBAR front and center (literally).Here are the components I chose for my system: - Sonos BRIDGE - Sonos PLAYBAR - Sonos SUB - Sonos PLAY:3 (x2 as Surround Speakers)Let's start with the setup. First thing I did was download the Sonos software for my laptop and hooked up the Wireless BRIDGE to my router. After the software downloaded and installed, getting the BRIDGE recognized by the software was as simple as pressing a button.After the BRIDGE was set-up, I went on to tackle the PLAYBAR. Installation was equally as simple. An optical cable from the TV along with power from an outlet are the only two wires needed to get running. Press a couple buttons to sync the PLAYBAR with the BRIDGE, follow a few prompts in the software, disable the TV speakers, and the PLAYBAR is handling audio for my TV and game consoles. It was super-simple and a dramatic improvement in fidelity compared to the TV's built-in speakers.Next up was adding the subwoofer and surrounds. I found a nice spot in the corner of the game room and hooked up the power cable to the sub. Press a button on the front of the SUB, follow a few prompts in the software, and the subwoofer is handling the low frequencies. Adding the two PLAY:3 surround speakers was just as easy. Provide power to each PLAY:3, press two buttons on each speaker, follow the prompts in the software, and your done.My new Game Room/Home Theater system was complete. Installation took less than an hour from start to finish. No big bulky receiver, no running wires under the carpet or baseboards, and the wife approves!How does it sound?After minimal tweaking in the Calibration Menus I got the sound just right. Mids and highs are clean and crisp, voices are clear, and the SUB is in perfect lock-step delivering deep/tight bass to Movies, Music and Games. This is an incredibly balanced combination that fills the room with accurate, high-quality sound. I honestly wasn't expecting to be this impresssed. I'm stunned by quality delivered without a dedicated A/V receiver. Incredible job, Sonos!Here are a few of the software features that I found most helpful.1) You can turn off the white status light on each speaker. This is great if you find those lights to be a distraction when the room is dark.2) You can enhance/amplify "Voice/Speech" which makes hearing dialog at low volume levels much easier.3) Not all room seating is rectangular. When calibrating the Surround Speakers you have the option for setting distances independently for the main seating position. Note: This is somewhat limited as the only three options to choose from are less than 2ft, 2-10ft and over 10ft.I took some screenshots of the software menus I found helpful. Check 'em out under Customer Images along with some photos of the PLAYBAR in my game room.I almost forgot. A review wouldn't be complete without at least a "Con". Here is my one real pet peave. There are no official Windows RT or Windows Phone 8 apps. It would be great to use my Surface RT tablet and/or my Nokia Lumia 920 phone as a controller for the system.That's it for now. Thanks for reading!
32 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
True 5.1 ruined for the sake of simplicity
By William B. Partridge
I'm a HUGE Sonos fan. I own 3 Play:5's and a Sub. I'd been wanting to replace my bulky 5.1 speaker system with a Playbar since it was rumored. All their products have incredible sound quality so I was optimistic about this set up.Set up is easy, sound quality is good for the unit. It's a nice product and looks great while being easy to operate (although more reliant on the Sonos application than I'd prefer). It's the typical awesomeness that you get with any Sonos product.When testing the Playbar with a direct connection to a device (e.g. Apple TV) and running it compared to my 5 speaker system through my receiver I was impressed with the quality. Sound was more spread out and filled the room better but dialog/center was ultimately a bit shallow feeling. If you turn on speech enhancement in the menu it helps out but something still feels slightly off. It's something you're unlikely to notice unless you're actively comparing like I was but to the Playbar's credit it was no slouch. I had a few people compare with me and everyone picked the typical 5.1 setup for better sound but had positive things to say about the Playbar - mainly noting its shallow feel in certain rangers and with dialog as the main issues.Here's the issue though: Sonos says they want you to use your TV as a hub, all the inputs going to the TV and then optical audio out from the TV to the Playbar. Great idea - but the problem is that most TV's won't pass Dolby Digital (DD) 5.1 surround from HDMI to the digital/optical audio. If it's from the TV itself (such as Netflix on a smart TV) or input directly from the coaxial cable it will pass 5.1 through the optical port BUT not from HDMI. This is either required to be HDCP compliant or is a licensing/cost issue (not sure). There are a few tv's that do this but they're few and far between and hard to verify.So if you have multiple sources (say an Xbox 360, Blu-Ray player, Apple TV, etc) there's no way for those sources to ever deliver 5.1 to the Playbar as Sonos intended (assuming you add a sub and some Play:3's to the mix). And you can't wire multiple inputs directly to the Playbar because they have a single input for the sake of simplicity. Normally I'm fine with this, but in light of the limitation with HDMI => optical pass through on TVs this became an oversight to me upon learning about the pass through issue. You can solve this by finding a TV or receiver that does pass through DD 5.1 through the optical audio, but you shouldn't have to. Alternatively you can use an optical audio switch, which is fine most of the time but may not work with a blu-ray player since Playbar lacks DTS support and are also limited on inputs, but this doesn't solve what to do for certain devices that don't have an optical audio port (e.g. most computers, Wii U, etc).In the end you're left with a system that is capable of producing much better sound (especially if a sub and some Play:3s are added) that most everyone won't be able to hear and results in this not sounding as good as it costs. And that's just a shame to me.Pros:++Easy set up++Sonos+Decent sound from stereo sourceCons:---Single optical input only--No DTS support--Entire package is expensive for 5.1 (or even 3.1)The only scenario I can see this being a good thing is if you have a room where you want to add a Sonos component and a soundbar to and you want to do it in a single package without caring about other components, like for a Den or a bedroom. Any other solution seems like there'd be a better option.Ultimately I'm disappointed. Had Sonos included multiple audio inputs or HDMI pass through, or even better yet HDMI switching (in place of a receiver) then this could have been an amazing piece. But the reliance on a single optical input being provided from the TV, one which will down convert any HDMI source's audio to stereo sound, in the name of simplicity just seems like a bad idea.Had I known about the tv's not passing through audio I wouldn't have bought this. My mistake, honestly, but it just makes it baffling as to why Sonos didn't provide different input options. As it stands I'm returning it. Hopefully Sonos will look in to making an HDMI hub option as an accessory.
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