A superior product for a fine price

Home-Theater-In-A-Box (HTIB) systems are quite popular these days. They run the gamut from a $160 RCA from Wal-Mart to systems costing thousands of dollars from a specialty Home Theater store.

This unit is what most people would consider about the middle of a reasonable price range. It includes a decent Onkyo receiver, a total of eight speakers, speaker wire, a sub cable, and a heap of packing material.

This unit does not include a DVD player. However, just about everyone already has one, and this way you can pick the one of your choice. Since you can get an excellent upconverting unit for sixty bucks, I don't consider this a big drawback.

The Receiver:
Onkyo makes fine mid-range receivers, and this is a pretty good example. It is equipped with a pretty large "jack pack", with inputs/outputs for more A/V equipment than most folks will ever own. Included with this is HDMI pass-through switching for two inputs. There are inputs for DVD, TV, CD, Phono, Tape, "Aux" and a 7.1 analog input for DVD-A, SACD or the audio for BluRay/HD-DVD. You get a pair each of Coax and Optical digital inputs to use for whatever you need. Most HTIB's do not include nearly so many inputs, which may severely limit what you can do with them.

Be warned that this is not a super-compact unit. While there are plenty of receivers on the market that are larger, it is in no way "slim". Plan accordingly, and remember ventilation.

Of note here is that the receiver performs no video processing of any kind. It is strictly a pass-through video switch unit. That means that if your input is composite, you will need to use the composite-out to your TV. Same thing goes with S-Video or HDMI. This is not a huge deal. The only thing you will need to remember is that when switching video inputs you may need to change the input on your TV. Given that for many HD-TV's, many people calibrate the picture individually for each source, you may not even use the video switching features of the receiver at all.

Also it is important to know that while it will pass an HDMI audio signal, it will not extract the audio data from it. You will therefore need to run audio cables (analog or digital) from HDMI sources such as DVD players separately from the HDMI cable itself. This is pretty standard for receivers in this price range.

All in all, this is a much better receiver than most HTIB's in this price range. You will not be shaking down the walls with noise, but it will supply more than enough power for most folks.

The Speakers:
The speakers here are average. They have sturdy, but inexpensive construction, usable sound quality, and a hefty powered subwoofer. While the speakers will not win any awards for sound quality, they are adequate. Since they use no propriatary connections, you may replace any of the speakers at any time with better ones as your budget permits.

You get a total of eight speakers with this box. Two fronts, a center, two "main" surrounds, two back surrounds, and a subwoofer. If you have no space or wiring to accommodate all eight speakers, you can skip the back surrounds for 5.1 sound instead. (Don't do what I did and skip the "main" surrounds and only install the back surrounds, even if your only surround speakers go at the back of the room. The auto-setup won't work, and even if it did, the DVD's are encoded to have the "back" surrounds as an optional channel, not the "main" surrounds.)

Also included is wire of various lengths for speaker attachment. (The surrounds get longer wires than the front and center speakers.) This is just inexpensive "zip" wire. You may want to use something a little heftier, especially if you upgrade the speakers.

All of the speakers are equipped with one or more keyholes for wall mounting. If you want to use a wall mount to provide tilting, you may have to look around for a little bit to find a mount that will work.

Since the front and center speakers have a rear port, using a mount instead of hanging them directly on the wall is strongly advised.

All in all, the speakers are about average for this price range unit. You will likely find yourself eventually upgrading them.

Setup:
Setup for this unit could not be easier for such a full-featured box. All of the speaker wires, terminals, and the speakers themselves are color-coded for easy attachment. While the included speaker wires could be easily served with cheap spring-terminals, all of the speaker terminals are full bind-posts, and can accommodate the heftiest of wires. (Note: If you have a pair of "B" speakers in a separate room, those do use spring terminals.)

If you use any of the digital audio inputs, you must "map" them so the receiver knows which input belongs to which component. This only takes a few button presses.

Once you get all of your components plugged in, you are ready to begin initial setup. Simply plug in the included microphone, set it up at ear level in the center of your seating area (I set it up on a block of the styrofoam the unit was packed in), and hit a single button on the remote. It will emit a series of "whooping" sounds out of each of the speakers in turn. You repeat this process for the left and right sides also. When all this is done (it takes about ten minutes) the receiver "thinks" for a couple of minutes and then your speakers are now well-calibrated. It automatically adjusts the volume and equalizer settings for all of your speakers. It will also set the subwoofer cross-over frequency. This particular receiver does a much better job with the auto-setup than the competition, and for folks that have never had a receiver that does this it is a dream come true. Without this marvelous feature, you could spend hours working on the adjustments and still not get it right.

If you replace the speakers with new ones later simply re-run the process to calibrate the speakers again.

Random tip:
Don't buy cables for your home theater from an electronics store. You can save about 80-90% by going to an on-line store like monoprice.com to buy your HDMI and optical cables (among other things). And no, I have nothing to do with that store, but I have ordered from them in the past and save a huge pile of money over buying them from Circuit City when I purchased my home theater.