Samsung HT-C5500 Blu-ray Home Theater System Review

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(More customer reviews)The HT-C5500 is a solid all-in-one home theater package at a good price, but you need to know what it can--and can't--do before you decide to buy.
First, some pros and cons:
Pros:
*Low cost
*Compact
*Easy setup
*Integrates with Samsung AnyConnect+ TVs for one-step DVD playback
*Decent enough sound and sufficient volume for a family room
*Netflix and YouTube connectivity work well
*Completely integrated in one relatively small unit
*iPod/iPhone dock included
*Speakers look nice and are very small and unobtrusive
Cons:
*Very limited inputs (Audio only; there are no HDMI inputs--the description above is wrong)
*Flabby bass response (no surprise given the 8lb passive subwoofer)
*Completely integrated--if one part dies, your entire home theater system is offline
*Wireless Internet use requires optional ($70) proprietary Samsung LAN adapter
*Proprietary speaker connectors
*AnyConnect+ can be a little wonky: If you have a disc in the tray, DVD playback seems to override all the other functions such as Internet services or the AUX input.
Even given all the Cons, this system suits my needs very well. I already owned a Samsung TV. I didn't want a proliferation of remotes or components. And the odd shape of my living room meant that I wasn't going to get optimal surround sound in any case, so I wasn't willing to pay a fortune for a system.
I ran the HT-C5500's HDMI output to one input on my TV and connected my FIOS box's optical audio output and my Mac mini's analog audio output to the appropriate inputs on the HT-C5500. The HT-C5500's remote is nothing special, but it makes it quite easy (after a little practice and reading of the manual) to switch between setups. You still need, however, to manually switch between HDMI inputs on the TV depending on what source you want to watch.
Note, however, that I'm at the absolute limit of what this system can do. I couldn't add, for instance, a game console into the mix.
Still, I'm very happy with my purchase. Yes, the HT-C5500 hits a wall quickly, but if you intend to stop before that wall arrives, you won't be disappointed.

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Samsung HT-C6600 Blu-Ray Home Theater System Review

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(More customer reviews)I was originally planning on getting the 6500, but couldn't find one locally. During that search, I ran into a store that had one 6600 left and it was on sale, so I went ahead and got it. The only apparent difference that I've found is the 6600 has Bluray 3D capability, but other than that they seem pretty identical.
Setup was relatively easy. Everything is color-coded and Samsung has their own little speaker wire plug, so it's hard to screw up. That makes it easy, but more difficult to do any kind of customization of your own with other speakers. The speaker calibration seemed to work pretty well, although now and the audio track randomly gets out of sync on occasion, requiring a re-boot to reset things. So far this has only happened when I've been watching the DVR, so I'm not sure if it's specific to that device or input or not.
I have my Xbox 360 and HD Cable plugged into the HDMI inputs, and it plays everything well. It's great playing games in surround sound, too. That adds a whole new dimension to the gaming experience. All of it is running to a 50" Panasonic plasma TV, which has one of the best pictures in the TV business to begin with, so the video quality is awesome.
I expected the sound to be marginal at best, coming from a bit of a home-theater customization background. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it actually sounds, though, particularly when playing DVD or Blurays. Don't get me wrong here, though. This provides the most basic of surround sound, which still greatly enhances watching movies, but it does not provide the same depth of sound as much more expensive and more powerful systems. That said, the subwoofer does get low enough to simulate most sounds, and the rest of it sounds pretty good. Dialogue is the best part, as this is actually sometimes the hardest part of a soundtrack to find a happy medium for comfortable listening without having to keep the remote handy for turning it up and down as the scenes change. The Samsung finds a balance between action and dialogue where you don't have to constantly adjust things, which is proof that they have the auto-calibration down pretty well.
I have mine wired directly to my home network. I didn't even bother with the wireless dongle, as I've yet to use one that works to my expectations. Even with a wired connection to a 10gb connection, I experienced Netflix issues. The entire internet-based menu and apps system is sluggish at best, so I will probably only use the internet for firmware updates. I believe this is a Samsung issue, not my internet, for the simple reason that I can watch full HD Netflix movies through my Xbox wirelessly with no issues at all. And that's fine with me...I still play them through the Samsung surround sound, so it's not a loss, although it would be nice to see Samsung come up with a fix to smooth things out.
There are various apps and whatnot you can play with online, but the remote is clumsy and poorly designed in my opinion. It lacks any intuitive way to type, for one thing, which limits what you can do efficiently on the web. You have to create an account at the Samsung app store, and another at their internet@tv or whatever it's called site, and I just haven't had the patience to sit through it all. I have enough computers and apps already, so I guess I'm happy with just being able to play Blurays in surround sound for now. :)
For the price, I don't think you can beat what you get with this system. $450 and it does almost everything. I do wish it would tell you what resolution it was outputting to the TV and what kind of sound it was playing in (i.e. DTS, Dolby 5.1, etc). As far as I've been able to discover, there is no way to tell if it is truly playing the encoded surround signal.
Pros: Price, good sound, easy setup, better than normal auto-calibration system for speakers
Cons: Confusing remote, unexplained slow-down in internet signal run through system that makes using Netflix almost impossible.

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Sony Digital Media Port Cradle for iPod (Black, TDM-iP50) Review

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(More customer reviews)I love this little gadget! I was buying the Sony Sound Bar for my Sonia Bravia TV and happened to see this accessory so I ordered it. I have an I-pod Touch (1st Gen) and got this particular one because it said you could watch your videos on the tv. Well this arrived yesterday (my sound bar is supposed to arrive today) and I hooked it directly to my tv and it worked perfectly! It took about 2 seconds and all I had to do was change the input on my tv to the Digital Media Port and it was good to go. I have a few videos that I purchased from I-Tunes that I had never seen any bigger than the screen of my I-pod but they were perfect on the 46" screen. I can't wait to hook up the sound bar tonight and see how my videos look and sound then!

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Samsung HT-C6500 Blu-ray Home Theater System Review

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(More customer reviews)Some HTiB (home theater in a box) systems are inflexible, hard to use and offer questionable performance with cheap, flimsy construction. One might even call them "cheesy." The Samsung HT-C6500 Blu-ray/DVD Home Theater System is not one of these systems. It offers solid audio and video performance, a wealth of online streaming features, including Netflix, Pandora and VUDU, built in Blu-ray, CD and DVD playback with pretty nice upconversion, WiFi networking and ample power to drive the 5.1 channel speaker system in a decent-sized room, and all for a reasonable price. Also, unlike many HTiB systems, the unit features two HDMI inputs, so you can add on a cable or satellite set-top box and/or a gaming system with single wire audio/video simplicity.
The system includes on-board decoding of the latest surround sound codecs, including DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD so it can take full advantage of the sonic capabilities of Blu-ray Disc. It also features snappy load times, loading a DVD in about 9 seconds, a simple Blu-ray disc in 11 seconds and a BD-Java Blu-ray Disc (the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" film) in about 25 seconds. These times compete with the fastest standalone players currently on the market. The initial boot up is a little slow at 22 seconds, but the player is doing a lot of stuff at start-up, including searching DLNA devices for compatible networked media files, as well as loading the code for streaming providers such as Netflix, VUDU and Samsung's own Internet@TV service.
During the review we did notice one disc compatibility issue (the unit can't get past the trailers on "The Incredible Hulk" Blu-ray Disc), but this can be worked around by disabling the BD-Live feature on the player (not ideal, but hopefully Samsung will fix this in a future firmware upgrade). Also, while the audio portion of the iPod dock worked flawlessly for us, if you want to also play video or photos on your iPod or iPhone through the system, you will need to connect an additional composite video cable between the HT-C6500 and your TV or projector (a basic video cable comes in the box). And don't look for anything fancy like album art in the iPod interface, because it just isn't there. However, controlling iPod song access from the unit's remote was very handy.
Speaking of the remote, this is probably the weakest link here. The navigational buttons are a little too low and transport buttons are a little too high to comfortably navigate through set-up and disc menus or to easily control playback. We were happy to see an auto-calibration system on-board (with included microphone) which can get the basics of speaker level and distance calibration accomplished without having to revert to test discs and SPL meters.
Performance tip for owners: if you feel that the bass lacks some definition or sounds a little "thumpy," try inserting a piece of foam or cloth (or some old socks) into the subwoofer port. This will actually tame the boom without losing a significant amount of sonic heft from the mix.
Overall, we were impressed with the HT-C6500 and would recommend it to anyone in the market for a mid-range HTiB system. It's long on features and performance but relatively short on price: a good combination.
You can read our complete review at Big Picture Big Sound (dot com).

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