The HT-S9300THX home theater system includes seven loudspeakers, a subwoofer, and a receiver. The receiver has four 3D-ready HDMI v1.4a inputs and can upscale video from any input source to 1080p full HD resolution. Other technologies included in the receiver include Dolby & DTS high definition audio processing, Dolby ProLogic IIz height channel processing, and other sound processing features from THX, Audyssey, and Onkyo.

The HT-S9300THX has THX I/S certification. The system’s front loudspeakers have THX-developed dual-woofer arrays. The THX Surround EX feature has various listening modes for music, movies, and games, and THX Loudness Plus is a volume-control technology that helps maintain surround impact at low listening levels.

Onkyo claims the HT-S9300THX has easy surround sound speaker setup. It features Audyssey 2EQ room acoustics correction technology.

A proprietary rear-panel Universal Port can be used to connect an optional Onkyo UP-A1 dock for iPod/iPhone and UP-HT1 HD Radio tuner module.

The Onkyo HT-S9300THX will be available at the end of July for MSRP $1,099.99.

Onkyo Website

Onkyo HT-S7300 Home Theater System

Onkyo has introduced two new 3D-ready home-theater-in-a-box systems. The HT-S6300 and HT-S7300 have HDMI v1.4 inputs, 1080p video upscaling, and various sound processing technologies.
The HT-S6300 and HT-S7300 have the following features in common:

• Four 3D-Ready HDMI v1.4 inputs
• 1080p video upscaling
• Lossless Dolby & DTS high definition audio
• Dolby height processing
• Audyssey automatic room equalization
• Seven home theater loudspeakers
• Subwoofer
• Audio-video receiver
• Audyssey calibration microphone
• Onboard iPod/iPhone dock

Onkyo HT-S6300 Home Theater System

The main difference between the S6300 and the S7300 is that the S7300 features a pair of black 41-inch tall floor-standing speakers, each with dual vertically-arrayed woofers. The center channel has the same drivers as the stereo speakers; it also features four compact surround sound speakers.
The S6300 by comparison has six 1-foot tall boookshelf speakers and a horizontal center speaker; all use the same four-inch two-way driver.
Both systems include a 290-watt subwoofer and a receiver with seven 130-watt 6-ohn amplifiers.

Availability
The Onkyo HT-S6300 and HT-S7300 are available now for suggested retail prices of $749 and $849, respectively.

Onkyo HT-S6300/HT-S7300 Product Pages

The Insignia Home Theater System is a complete 5.1 surround sound system with 110 watts per channel. It includes five speakers and a 120-watt subwoofer. It features three HDMI 1.4 inputs and one HDMI output which supports the new Blu-ray audio and 3D video formats. The system also includes a pre-programmed Universal remote.

The system’s Audyssey technology automatically adjusts quieter sections of movies and TV shows and levels out the sounds of loud commercials.

The system is now available exclusively at Best Buy for $399.

Best Buy Press Release

Bose Lifestyle T20

Bose has introduced its latest home entertainment systems, the 5.1 surround sound Lifestyle V-Class and T-Class. The new systems feature Bose’s Unify intelligent integration system, which simplifies initial setup and the overall entertainment experience.

Bose Lifestyle V25

The Unify integration system uses a combination of hardware and software to improve the entertainment experience. Setup is simplified with an on-screen guide with step-by-step instructions. The Unify system also makes it possible to use just one remote for the entire entertainment system; the V-Class and T-Class systems accommodate up to six HD sources. The Lifestyle remote is claimed to operate almost any entertainment device including Blu-ray players and cable boxes.

Bose Lifestyle V35

The three announced systems include the V35, V25, and the T20. All feature five speakers and a hide-away Acoustimass bass module. Bose ADAPTiQ technology automatically calibrates the sound system depending on the room size.
The T-Class systems feature Virtually Invisible or Direct/Reflecting speaker arrays and a universal remote control; the V-Class ups the ante with Jewel Cube or Direct/Reflecting speaker arrays, a built-in AM/FM tuner, iPod dock, and a more advanced universal remote control. All systems have a central console for connecting sources and automatic video upscaling.

The Lifestyle V35 and V25 are available now from Bose for $3,299 and $2,499, respectively; the T20 is available for $1,999.

Bose Website

HT-CT150, CT350 Soundbars

Sony HT-C150 Soundbar

The HT-C150 and HT-C350 sound bars offer 3.1 sound. The C150 is a 340W system (85W x3 channels and 85W subwoofer) while the C350 is 400W (100W x3 channels and 100W subwoofer). The C150 is designed to complement Sony’s 2010 BRAVIA 32-inch HDTVs.

Sony HT-C350 Soundbar

The C350 includes a bracket that allows it to attach directly to several 40-inch plus sets (wall mounted or table top).

The HT-C150 and HT-C350 will be available this may for $300 and $400, respectively.

HT-SF470 5.1 Surround Sound System

Sony HT-SF740 5.1 Surround Sound System

The HT-SF740 is a 1000W 5.1 surround sound system (157W x5 channels and 167W subwoofer). It has floor-standing front and rear speakers; S-Air wireless technology is optional.

The HT-SF740 will be available this June for $550.

Aperion Audio recently introduced its SLIMstage 30 Soundbar for flat-screen HDTVs; it is designed to produce theater-like sound in a small space.

The SLIMstage 30 is aimed at customers that desire high-quality audio in a secondary viewing locations such as bedrooms and dens that may not accomodate a traditional 5.1 surround sound system. The company claims it is simple to connect out of the box but also allows audio enthusiasts to tweak the sound to their likings.
The SLIMstage 30 includes Dolby Digital and Digital DTS Surround for virtual surround sound effects.

The SLIMstage 30 is rated for 140W of output; it has four main 50x50mm speakers and two woofer arrays, including one 3″ magnet woofer and two 3″ bass radiators.

An Aperion Bravus 8A subwoofer can be paired with the system; it provides 100W of RMS power.
The Aperion SLIMstage 30 soundbar with the Bravus 8A subwoofer is priced at $799; the SLIMstage 30 soundbar unit alone is priced at $599. Both are available now at Aperion’s website.

Aperion Audio Product Page

Yamaha today announced five new Home Theater in-a-box (HTiB) systems supporting HDMI 1.4 and 3D video passthrough.

Yamaha YHT-693 5.1 system

The announced HTiB systems are as follows; all have HDMI 1.4 inputs/outputs and support 3D video passthrough (to be enabled with planned firmware upgrade):

• $399: YHT-393BL
• $449: YHT-493BL
• $549: YHT-593BL
• $649: YHT-693BL
• $849: YHT-893BL

The $549 and up models add Yamaha Parametric Room Acoustic Optimizer (YPAO), which compensates for the acoustic qualities of a room; they also add an iPod dock (which is now iPhone-certified), return audio through HDMI 1.4, and decode all authorized Blu-ray sound formats. The iPod dock is compatible with all systems ($99.95); a Bluetooth receiver is optional ($129).
All announced systems are 5.1 with the exception of the $849 YHT-893BL, which is 7.1. Most of the differences between the models lie in the speakers.
The $399 and $449 model both feature a 5x100W amp, a 100W 8″ sub, and compact two-way woofers, but the $449 model has larger two-way woofers.
The $549 and $649 model use the same 100W 8″ sub but use a slightly more powerful 5x105W amp; the $649 model uses larger 6″ woofers rather than the 2.75″ in the $549 model.

Yamaha YHT-893 7.1 system

The top-end $849 model has a 7x90W amp, and a 100W 10″ sub.
A Blu-ray or DVD player is not included with any of the systems.

A/V Receivers

Yamaha also announced three new A/V receivers (AVRs). The models are as follows:

• $249: RV-V367: 5x100W
• $379: RV-V467: 5x105W
• $479: RX-V567: 7x90W

These receivers are Yamaha’s first to support 3D video passthrough and HDMI 1.4. Feature support includes automatic lip sync, HDMI repeater, 120Hz PC refresh rate support, and 30/36-bit Deep Color compatibility.
Only the top-end $479 model includes 1080p upscaling of analog input formats. The top two models support all authorized Blu-ray sound formats, and YPAO.

Source

Test Time

With the new HTPC all put together it was time to fire it up and see how things looked. I started by just making sure it powered up and the machine could boot. After doing that successfully it was time to get an operating system and some software on it so I could start playing my content. I chose to make this a Linux-based HTPC because its free, will easily network with my server (which also runs Linux), and there are some excellent software options for HTPC’s on Linux. Both XBMC and Boxee have recently released updates in the last two months and eventually I will be fully testing both media center softwares but will start by running a minimal Ubuntu install and XBMC. I mostly followed the guide found here although I used Ubuntu 9.10 and installed the nvidia driver from Ubuntu. Alternatively, if you wish to install XBMC on top of a full Ubuntu installation, these set of instructions will help. Setup was pretty simple and I was able to accomplish these steps without any misteps. I have purposely kept everything off this machine that wasn’t necessary for playback via XBMC or Boxee. I don’t have a full desktop or full featured window manager on here and the machine to auto logs in to XBMC when the machine boots.

After following these steps I rebooted and was very quickly presented with the XBMC home screen. And when I say quickly I am speaking literally, it was so fast I had to do it again and time it. It took a grand total of about 40 seconds to go from pushing the power button to the home screen. Thirty of those seconds were spent getting through the motherboards power-on checks (I’m sure this can be further optimized). From the time I hit the loading grub text to the time I was in XMBC was 10 seconds. This made me incredibly happy, the extra money I spent on the SSD was going to be worth it, I may even need another one or two of these for my laptop and desktop. Seriously, it was that fast.

With that bit of gushing out of the way we can get on to the rest of the initial testing. I did some initial setup to make sure my sound and video settings were correct. XMBC has a nice screen for adjusting overscan, which for some reason by default was absurdly high on my setup. I also set the video to be output via HDMI and the sound to be passed through my digital coaxial output. Next it was time to start adding some content. I added the folders on my server containing my music and my movies to the appropriate content sources and could play them just fine. I asked XBMC to scan the folders and it was able to grab covers, fan art, and information for about almost all of my movies and about three quarters of my music. I will be going back and renaming and reorganizing some of these folders a bit better to see if I can’t get a few more titles added with all the coverart. XMBC was able to get cover art for both mp3 and flac files that I have.

Performance

The system itself is not totally silent. If I turn off everything else and leave it on I can easily hear it from a few feet away. However, with anything playing or when sitting across the room the system is inaudible. Temperatures when idle were reasonable, and seem to stay in the low to mid thirties.

Movie playback was excellent. I went through and tested a number of clips I’ve been using to test some of the other media streamers we’ve reviewed lately. My rips of the Bluray versions of Quantum of Solace and Kung Fu Panda both played flawlessly without any stuttering or slowdowns. I monitored the system remotely from my laptop and cpu usage stayed under 25% on both cores and temperatures climbed only a few degrees above the normal 35 degrees I was seeing in this box. Interestingly, playing these same clips in Boxee gave me lower cpu usage by a wide margin. While playing Quantum of Solace I recorded usages below 10% of the cpu when in Boxee. The software are highly related, and I had assumed video playback would be equal between the two media centers, but clearly something was different during my tests.

Music capability of this device was priority number one for me. I know that seems kind of silly to most, but I love music. I listen to it all day while working. I come home and will listen there too. I might be backwards, but I still buy CDs, I still listen to complete albums from start to end frequently. I rip every disk I get to flac files as I find it much easier to browse for something interesting this way than digging through all my albums. I’ve tried a lot of music library programs and music playback program, but I’ve never truly found anything I fell in love with. I’m currently using Rhythmbox on my Linux laptop and foobar on my Windows 7 desktop, although I have a number of other options installed on both machines. Playback of music on through XBMC works well, and the sound quality out of this box is good and on par with my Windows 7 machine running foobar which I also have hooked into my main stereo. The interface is nice, and works but is nothing spectacular when using the included Confluency skin. I very briefly tried a few other skins but returned to Confluency for the time being. I have had some trouble getting shuffling to work correctly, and I would also appreciate a better handling of playlist creation. After I spend some time enjoying my new toy I expect to revisit the music playback aspect of this box and see if I can come to a more desirable solution.

Using XBMC’s plugin system I was able to add several Internet sources with varying degress of success. Apple trailers lite plugin worked excellently, and I spent a good hour just watching different movie trailers. I was excited to find a plugin for TED talks since this was one of the sources I had hoped to get working in my home theater. Unfortunately, when trying to playback this video I ended up with sound only and a unwatchable picture. A few sources resulted in playback errors and no video or audio. XBMC is not known for its ability to provide online content in the same was as its sibling software Boxee is, so I expected a bit of trouble trying to get these to work. I quickly tested some Internet sources on Boxee and as expected not only did the play back correctly, the interface is extremely slick. Searching for a partcular show will bring up options to watch it at the different online sources it is available through, such as Hulu and nbc.com. A little more trouble shooting will be necessary to get the plugin system working correctly.

Conclusion

With most things working, or at least somewhat functional I decided I would take a few weeks to just enjoy having this system up and running. Use it for a while with XBMC and Boxee and try to decide what is lacking or other features I really want and then try to get some of those. XBMC has tremendous support for other interface options (called skins) and both XBMC and Boxee have an active community of developers creating plugins to enhance the capabilities of these media centers. Overall I was very pleased with the ease of getting a basic XBMC and Boxee setup running. Video and audio quality was good, and I was able to playback most of the formats I wished to handle. More extensive testing will be needed to fully realize all the goals I had laid out.

Sony BDV-E570 3D Blu-ray Home Theater System

Sony’s latest Blu-ray home theater system is now available, the BDV-E570. This 5.1 system offers a 3D Blu-ray disc player, 1080p video playback, WiFi, and DLNA compatibility.

The big news with the BDV-E570 is 3D Blu-ray disc support. 3D Blu-ray discs will be available this summer, and the BDV-E570 will require a firmware update to add support (offered free of charge). Sony will be launching a full line of 3D TVs to complement its 3D Blu-ray home theater lineup.

Additional features of the BDV-E570 include BRAVIA Internet Video, which allows users to stream a variety of content including TV shows, videos, and music from providers such as Netflix, YouTube, Slacker, and others. DLNA compatibility means the BDV-E570 can share content from other DLNA-enabled devices on a home network (it will be supported this summer via a firmware update).

The Sony BDV-E570 3D Blu-ray home theater system is available now for $549.99.

Sony Product Page

Samsung today announced two new soundbars for its home theater lineup, the HW-C450 and HW-C451. They include a wireless subwoofer, up to 280W of power output, and a grill-less speaker design.
The soundbars support virtual surround sound and connect to the TV via a single optical cable. Designed to complement flat-screen HDTVs, the soundbars can be wall-mounted and have a focus on design, featuring Samsung’s prism Touch of Color pattern and open speakers. The HW-C450 and C451 are differentiated by color; the C450 comes in black and the C451 in silver.
The Samsung HW-C450 and HW-C451 have an MSRP of $349.99; the C450 will be available this month and the C451 will be available in May. The HT-WDC10 wireless iPod/iPhone dock will be available for both units in May for $149.99.