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Kenwood HTB-705DV 5-Disc Progressive-Scan DVD Home Theater System

Kenwood HTB-705DV 5-Disc Progressive-Scan DVD Home Theater System

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great system for the money
Review: I connected this system to a Hitachi 43 inch Wide Screen HDTV and I have to say I'm impressed. First let me say that this is by no means a $10,000 dollar custom home theatre system, but for a decent size room it's all your gonna need and more!

It comes with 5 good speakers for surround sound, they are pretty heavy and appear well built. The sub is NOT powered, but kicks out 100 watts. It's plenty to shake the walls!

The progressive scan 5 disc DVD player is a steal on this system. It's got component out which gives you the HDTV quality DVD picture. ***MAKE SURE YOUR TV CAN ACCEPT COMPONENT VIDEO***If will have 3 colored connectors on the back.

The reciever pushes a total of 600 watts. It's got more plugs than you'll have wires to connect to it. There are plenty of adjustments that can be made to the sound, which is always nice.

In short, this is a great higher end system (relatively speaking) and comes through with what you think you'd get from a $600 plus system. It rocks.

----A few quick notes----
You may want to buy monster cables with this, as the wires they give you aren't long enough (for rear speakers) and doesn't supply official component wires. Ask your store rep what you need. I suggest the "monster home theatre in a box" pre-packaged set (around 30 bucks) and the component wires.

Secondly, MANY people will tell you that a "home theatre in a box" like this one is no good. They may correct when talking about systems between 1-400 dollars, but once your over 500 your getting into some VERY sweet systems. I went to ... and heard everything form the low end sony to the expensive BOSE system. The Kenwood was the best sounding most feature rich that I came accross. Now you can't compare a Kenwood to a custom made Klipsch set that gets into the thousands, but TRUST me a system like this will impress you!

AND...I have heard that the Sony DVD Dream system (for the same price as the kenwood) is NOT much of a system. It's built more around looks and a DVD player than the actual sound. It claims 500 watts, but sounds too light for most tastes. Your probably paying more for the name and how "pretty" this thing looks more than the quality. I LOVE sony, have a 36 inch WEGA, but this time I'd advise staying far far away from DVD dreams!!!

Hope this helps and good luck!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Unless you've got an unending budget this will do.
Review: I think for the money that Kenwood is offering a pretty good package. I am not an avid movie watcher but just have a theater to entertain guests. The quality of the Kenwood system is middle of the road. If you are looking for the best shop elsewhere. If you are looking for good enough at a realistic price this is it. As a sidebar the speakers are a little bigger and heavier than others at a comparable price. This is not a bad thing but don't let the store sell you on the universal wall mounts for them.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Unless you've got an unending budget this will do.
Review: I think for the money that Kenwood is offering a pretty good package. I am not an avid movie watcher but just have a theater to entertain guests. The quality of the Kenwood system is middle of the road. If you are looking for the best shop elsewhere. If you are looking for good enough at a realistic price this is it. As a sidebar the speakers are a little bigger and heavier than others at a comparable price. This is not a bad thing but don't let the store sell you on the universal wall mounts for them.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent System
Review: Recent Update:
After buying an HDTV, I went in search of a new system (settling on an onkyo) to replace this one. The main reasons were the kenwood has only 2 digital inputs, no component switching, and a weak passive sub.

I recently purchased this system at a best buy during a promotion, so I got the system + monster cabling for 500.
I compared the system to the Sony and to the various other systems in the store, and by far I found this to have the nicest, cleanest, deepest sound.
I was considering one levle down, the 505. That system did not have a DVD player, was a 100 bucks cheaper, had a notch down in the receiver but does have a powered sub. In comparing the sound quality, I thought that the 705 was at least 1.5->2.0X better. With the addition of the DVD changer, it's a no brainer. In terms of sound quality, the only systems (in Best Buy) that I found to have higher quality were on the 1000.00 ballpark.
Operation of the system is excellent. Sound and picture quality are noticeably improved. The Prologic II is excellent, makes DVDs completely immersive.
Overall, I have no complaints about the quality of the system. I think this is a super deal particularly if you can get ahold of any dealings to get the monster cables with it (10->50% improvement with those cables at least, I think) the DVD/MP3/CD changer is very nice. Setup on the system is easy with cable+vcr+DVD that came with it+XBox. The XBox has a surround kit that I have not yet researched, but if it works will buy.
Now the bad stuff:
1) MP3 names don't scroll. For 500 bucks, I think this should have a feature my 80 dollar CD/MP3 has.
2) Complex Remotes. I think this is almost every system on this level, but having used a few I think this one is particularly complicated. You basically need to read through the book to do almost anything but the simplest controls properly.
3) Monster Cable Orientation. When I setup my system with the monster theater pack, I noticed on day 2 terrible sound. The intuitive slant downward orientation of the cables was wrong, and they had all slipped out. I had to flip them all 180 degrees. After this no problem, but this was annoying.


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