Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent! Awesome sound - and easy to setup!
By Ankit S. Malpani
Looking for a Home Theater wasn't the easiest initially - since there are many many choices.The choices need to be narrowed down on basis of three things:1)Budget (how much are you ready to spend)2)Size of the room - where the home theater will be set3)HTIB or build your own ( buy a separate A/V reciever and separate speakers)I live in a small manhattan apartment (1000 sq feet) and had a minimal budget of around $700. I also had a few conditions that I definitely wanted a home theater with an A/V reciever (for future flexibility).My biggest priority was very good sound quality for movies, music and games on my 46 inch LCD. (Didn't care much about fm reciever/ipod dock etc).before I started my search, I was biased towards Sony and Bose - and wasn't even considering Samsung.However after testing - I was very dissapointed with Sony's systems (This one is far superior).The two systems from bose that I liked were very expensive ($2700 and $3300).After about two/three weeks of heavy testing, only two systems provided extremely good sound quality and were under $700 (which I thought were apt for a small sized apartment/living room).- Samsung HW-C650S (this product)- Sony HTCT-500 (Sound bar)After a little more testing, I liked Samsung better. The sound is pretty crisp from both systems, but it is awesome to have rear speakers that produce the Surround sound.Sound Quality-For my living room (around 1000 sq.ft), the sound has been awesome.-Most of the SONY systems had an issue: The sound is too loud during the action sequences in movies/games. However, the sound is very low during a dialogue scene. Hence, you need to increase the volume to listen to the dialogues, but decrease it back when a loud explosive scene comes on.I havent seen this issue in Samsung. It delivers a strong sound durinng action sequences and also a crisp/clear sound during a dialogue scene.-Good base, various sound themese like (music,movie,game etc)Ease of use:-I set this up in about an hours time and it started working like a charm. No real issues so far.Another advantage:-This system has an A/V reciever. So for any new buys in the future, I can still use it. ( a new Blu ray player, new TV, new speakers etc)-It is really well priced. (Just for $400 I think, it is an awesome system)-4 HDMI inputs-works very well, with a samsung TV.some improvements:-This comes with an iPod dock. However, I cannot select a playlist to play. It starts playing the library automatically. This is not a big issue but an annoyance. Hopefully samsung is looking into this and updates the firmware soon.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
My first home theater system...and it's a pretty good one
By SmiBurHo
My wife and I just moved into our first house and after years of living in a cramped apartment, I was finally able to splurge on entertainment products for our living room. While I've done a ton of research for nearly everything else in my set-up, I took a chance on this system and am reasonably happy so far.For whatever reason, I've bought nothing but Samsung products for our living room. 52" LCD TV and Blu-Ray player. I figured I'd stick to the same name brand for the HTIB system.On the plus side, the sound quality is pretty solid, especially during sporting events. It's really, really nice. Music sounds fine on it, too. The set-up was fairly painless, as long as you follow the instructions closely. I love that it has 4 HDMI inputs, which is great since I have a cable box, Xbox 360 and Blu-Ray player. It makes it far easier to change inputs, compared to having to navigate HDMI inputs with the television's own controller. I was absolutely blown away by the sound of the system when playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Fantastic stuff.My living room is a very odd shape and design, and for that reason I'm glad this system has the ASC device to balance the sound. Picture if you will a rectangle on its side. My TV is in the upper right corner. A bay window takes up nearly the entire right wall. The top/north wall has a fireplace that juts out. The bottom/south wall is where one couch is, but the staircase to go up stairs is behind it, so there's actually only 1/2 a wall there. The left/west wall has a love seat, and the south-left corner leads directly into the kitchen area. That made it incredibly difficult to figure out where exactly to place the speakers. The ASC mic did a pretty good job getting the volume levels from each speaker balanced. I just wish there were a way to figure out the best speaker positioning without spending money to have some Geek Squad guy come out to the house.On the downside, the rear speakers aren't wireless, although the cable is certainly long enough. When hung on the wall, the speakers also don't have an indentation to run the wire through, so the speakers hang on the wall weirdly. The system can't expand to 7.1 channels, but I knew that when I purchased it. The system is fairly new, so my Harmony One remote had to be manually programmed. This has lead to a few occasions where the AVR doesn't change inputs, despite repeatedly hitting buttons on the remote. Occasionally during commercials on TV, the sound will momentarily drop out for a second or so. I can't explain that one. I'm also amazed by the amount of dust the speakers and AVR attract. My wife and I keep our house spotless, but dust still finds its way to the system and it's hard not to notice it on the shiny surfaces. Despite my best efforts, it seems like everything is covered in dust by the end of the day.I also have a Nintendo Wii, which has a composite output, and I still can't figure out how to connect it to the AVR. The video inputs are there for a composite connection, but I'm unclear where the audio gets plugged in. I'm not a fan of the iPod connection, either. Once you connect an iPod or iPhone, there's no way to select a song or playlist or anything....the device just plays. I had to set the AVR to "Video iPod" in order to navigate the iPod and play the music/playlist I wanted to. A minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.As this is my first HTIB, I really enjoy the HW-C560S and I hope to get quite a few good years out of it. That said, my next home theater purchase will be a larger, better set-up that works better with the living room.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Nice Receiver With My New Samsung 63" Plasma HDTV
By BRJR
This receiver comes with a 6 Speakers-set (as shown); and, the sound is remarkably good. Only thing, I don't like, is that I seem to have erroneously believed the rear speakers were wireless, but so far, I have been unable to figure out how; and, folks at Samsung USA, were of no help, because they are not even aware that this Samsung theater set, is even out yet (their site, says: "It's Coming")--- seems, that Amazon.com, is among the first to have received this new Samsung product line, so far. My satellite TV engineer that installs and configures my samsung and other such products ---- is very pleased with the simplicity of this speaker system and how well it integrates with my other Samsung products via HDMI and even component hook-up. Very low cost, but excellent receiver and speakers system to use with the more modern Samsung Plasma / LCD Wide Screen HDTVs and Samsung (Samsung, for benefits of the HDMI CEC feature) or other modern components with HDMI connections. For Samsung users, there's likely no other modern 5.1 channel Stand-a-lone Receiver/speaker system of this superb quality and price, so thanks Samsung, and also thanks to Amazon.com, for being among the first to have received this new Samsung system.
See all 21 customer reviews...
Pretty pathetic system if you ask me.
Terrible sound with no mid-range
