BOSE LS35-BK Lifestyle 35 Home Entertainment System - Black

Rating:
Summary: Love the sound and size, Picture Quality VERY POOR
Review: Hi tec buffs out there. I have had my lifestiles 35 up and running for just over a week now. I do love the sound and I dont complane about midrange of base or anything on the sound of the 35s.just SUPPER HAPPY WITH THAT! I also realy enjoy the size and how they look in my celing and walls. Now for the bad part! The DVD player built in the media center is poor quality. its old tecnoligy. it has realy only a place for S vedio to transfer the vidio signel with. It comes with a special cross over wire that SHOULD let you step up the S vidio to Y COMPONET. I used this crossover wire and got signel drop out from time to time watching a DVD movie. the screen would go black for split seconds at a time. Bose replaced my cross over wire pluse the Media center in hopes of releving the problem but NO LUCK! the black screen continued. I then droped it down to the straight S vidio conection ( NOT USING CROSS OVER WIRE) and it played with no DROP OUT! The problem is in the crossing over from S vidio to Y componet I gess. BUT even when its playing fine I feel the picture quality on the DVDS is poor. It does NOT have progressive scan and I felt it was granney and a bit dark of a picture. I should tell you at the same time I set up the Lifestiles 35 I allso set up a brand new DLP 56" Gateway TV. so all in this system is brand new. Well I did NOT want to give up the sound quality and size of this system so I had to go out and buy the Samsung DVD-HD931. it has TRUE Y componet conection but better than that it has the NEW and IMPROVED DVI conection! My new Gateway 56" DLP has DVI also. I hooked up the new DVD player using the Y componte conections in the same input on my TV to prove witch one was casuing the black screen! There was NO signel drop out NO black screen with the Samsung in the Y componet input on my new gateway DLP TV, NOW I can say for sure the problem is in the Bose or cross over whire to use the Y componet. ( rember I said before, drop it down to s vidio on the media center and it will play with no black screens outs) well hope this helps you Bill

Rating:
Summary: Highway robbery!
Review: That anyone would seriously plop down three grand for this joke of a system boggles the mind...oh well, never underestimate the power of advertising, and of outrageous-price-inflation-as-marketing-strategy.

My boss bought one of these for his wife this past Christmas, and poor guy---his wife loves the way it looks, but he absolutely hates the way it sounds: tinny treble, weak bass, fuzzy midrange. Sure Bose is great at squeezing things into a tiny pretty package but don't kid yourself, you sacrifice TONS on sound quality, features and functionality. For instance, the main unit offers a ridiculously tiny number of digital inputs on the back, the speaker connections are poor quality, and you can't even set a high-pass filter/crossover but are stuck with the factory setting!

This system is OK if you only watch movies with loud explosions every ten seconds, never listen to any music except for maybe rap, and most of all if you don't know a darn thing about home audio and are too lazy to learn. Bose has done everything for you, assuming that you have the sonic discernment of a mudpie, all you have to do is turn the power on, hit the "play" button, and you're off...

Which in and of itself is no crime, were it not for the obscene price attached to this system---you can get almost audiophile quality for about half, and similar sound from even the lowest end Sony home theater in a box setup for under two hundred dollars!

My boss though has the dough to have real audio equipment for himself in his own separate media room, leaving this ridiculous getup in the living room for his wife, thereby earning boatloads of spousal brownie points in the process.

Unless you are so lucky, I'd advise you to look elsewhere.