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Panasonic SC-HT900 Home Theater System with 5-Disc DVD Changer

Panasonic SC-HT900 Home Theater System with 5-Disc DVD Changer

List Price: $499.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Bad subwoofer
Review: "I will be tackling Panasonic's SC-HT900 700 Watt home theatre system today. It's a luxurious looking package with 4 slim tallboy speakers accompanied by a center speaker, the SC-HT900 looks tall and slim. The subwoofer comes with a built-in 220 watt power amplifier and holds the same slim and tall characteristics. It seems that Panasonic has made this home theatre system look like those fashion models with too much makeup and too much height. The only difference I see between them....the HT900 is metallic silver and butt naked!...full review @ Bytesector...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: it's the bomb
Review: (...)Setup is a breeze(you do need a screw driver). The speaker stands are cool. It's not light and tip over easily like someone said in an earlier review. The 4 tall speakers can be either the height shown in the picture or half as tall. The speakers have plenty of power, for me at least. The bass is really powerful too, unlike what two other reviewers said. There are two levels of control for base. One is under channel setup, sub output from -6 to +6. The other is under bass level, from 1 to 4. I'm only setting the output to 0(factory default), and already at night I feel bad even for using a level three. I tried the other day max out everything for a few seconds. The whole building feels like shaking. People are different. I guess I'm just not a bass head. I also placed the sub at the corder near the wall, where bass sounds the best(It actually makes a pretty big difference).

As for the dvd changer, I have no complain either. It's really nicely designed. Somebody complained it takes 30 seconds to switch DVD, which I dont observe. For me the whole thing takes about 10-15 seconds. You hear the disc changer moves inside, then you 'll see on the screen says reading. It's very reasonable. unless You expect a 2 second switch time.

the overheat noise mentioned by two other reviewers. Sorry man, I don't get any of that either. I leave it on all day long playing mp3, never heard of any unexpected noise or observed any overheat problems. I felt the speakers after a whole day's use, it's not even WARM. The guy who said who only observed this when he played mp3 cds, are you sure it's not the mp3 cd? I noticed, with this system, 128kb mp3 and 192kb mp3 make a huge difference. sound quality from my 192kb mp3 cds is super, while 128kb isn't.

region code, i'm still not sure. I only have one region 2 dvd and it actually played no problem. Although the menu said region 1 only. I'm asking my friend for more asian dvds and will test out later.

One thing I agree with many other users, is the engineering notebook manual, and the remote. Quite some functions are hard to use(let you use under some settings but will give error under others and there's pretty much no way you can find out from the manual). All those fancy functions have this problem. for example, some functions you can only adjust when the disc is NOT playing. Other functions you can only use when SURROUND is turned off. etc. The screen will only give you error message but it doesn't explain why you cant use it. The manual is pretty much useless. But I pretty much figured everything out within one day. So it's not that bad.

Overall, great system, go get it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Known defect.
Review: After 4 months of dealing with Panasonic customer support and their authorized service centers I finally have an answer to what is causing the popping noise and sporadic sound loss. The Panasonic tech actually called me, which renewed a little faith in the company. He said it is a know issue with a number of these systems. Apparently a circuit board on the amplifier in the subwoofer is faulty.

Now why does the authorized service centers not know this and why does the customer service personal guarantee you there is not a known defect in the product. I can't tell you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very sleek
Review: Armed with a budget of under 500, my choices were a Onkyo HT-S760 and this Panasonic HT900. I chose this one over the Onkyo coz it has a 5 disc DVD player / tallboy satellites (speaker which need no stand) and this one looks really neat. Onkyo was supposed to sound better, and its much heavier and bulky. But after listening to both systems, I decided this is very good by itself. This system sounds excellent, looks great and is very reasonably priced.
The remote is a tricky beast (it has shift-keys!). The system was very easy to setup and I got it up and running in no time.
I wish the bass would boom heavier - but to be fair, I havent really pushed it hard since I live in an apartment complex & didnt want to share my music with unwilling neighbors LOL.
I was amazed at the Dolby ProLogic II - as it seem to extract full surround from VHS cassettes.
This is my first HT, and it has changed the way I see! :)

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Low Price but not the best
Review: bad: gets overheated when, and you can hear pops in the speakers(it happened only with MP3 in my case)
progressive scan may not be working in my case.
can adjust seating position(it wont work)

good: cant find a similar stuff for this price.
sound is good, looks fabolous.....

i may return it(just 3 weeks old)....since the overheating may become a big problem in the long run...

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Stay away from Panasonic!
Review: Customer Service - the Panasonic website claims this is very important to them. I had my home theater only 3-4 months when a VCR tape got stuck. I has now been at the service center for almost 4 months! When I am lucky enough to get a response from Panasonic (which is rare), they make promises of completion and/or replacement. But promises won't play the DVD's my family would have liked to watch together over the holidays. When we finally got through to the customer service center on the phone, they had the nerve to hand up on us twice. IF YOU WANT A COMPANY TO STAND BEHIND THEIR PRODUCTS - STAY AWAY FROM PANASONIC!!! I have truly given up hope of even getting my home theater back from the Panasonic service center.


Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Known problem with this unit!!
Review: Don't buy this unit. There is a problem with it over heating and causing a loud poping sound after a couple hours of use. I talked with Panasonic about this and they will not admit to the problem, however, you can find several other people that have had the same problem on the net.

When asked for replacement unit, I was told that I would have to take it to my local repair center to have a tech look at the unit. This unit is still under warrenty and it is going to take several days for the unit to be repaired. No sound or DVD while this takes place. I will never buy another Panasonic unit again, to bad because this was the best unit I found on the market. Guess next time I'll pay the extra money and get a Sony! At least they care about their customers.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Amazon Return Kudos
Review: First the bad news, causing me to downgrade the rating by a star: I received this system via UPS ground ship on a Thursday. After the set-up of this system with my new Sony 27FS100 TV, the main HTIB unit failed to power on. Despite troubleshooting with Panasonic techies (800-211-PANA), I reluctantly disassembled the entire home theater and e-mailed Amazon at 10PM on a Friday night. Much to my surprise, I received a reply at 11:30PM apologizing for my troubles and informing me that a replacement system was enroute via 2-day Fedex. In addition, the defective system was to be picked up at my home, at no charge. UPS picked up the system on Monday, and the replacement system arrived on Wednesday. Amazing customer service by Amazon. Lesson learned: carefully unpack and remember how a large system such as this is packed, in the event one needs to repack and return. Amazon made this unfortunate occurrence a much more pleasant experience than it could have been.

Now for the system. I bought and installed 16-gauge speaker wire for ~$13 instead of the supplied thin (18-20 gauge?) wire. The larger speaker wire will not fit inside the slots in the supplied speakers, and I widened a few of the plastic slots with a Dremel--your call if you think it worth the trouble to use heavier wire. I did not replace the speaker wire in the upper part of the speaker tower.

The only cable supplied with the HTIB system is a single video composite cable. If you have a fairly new TV, you will get best video performance by purchasing one set of component video cables for the HTIB-to-TV (spent $24 locally, but noted afterwards you can get a component cable set for ~$15 on Amazon). I also used one set (~$7) of RCA audio cables (L/R) for TV audio out to HTIB TV audio in. I also used another set ($7) of RCA audio cables for VCR audio out to HTIB VCR audio in. Finally, I used the supplied video cable between my VCR and the TV (old VCR did not have S-Video or component plugs).

Other reviewers are correct about the operator's manual (tediously written by audio engineers) and the little buttons on the remote. Take some time to walk yourself through the features. DO follow the recommendation to select 16:9 output of the HTIB during "Quick Setup," if your TV can handle the input. My Sony has selectable "enhanced 16:9."

Sound quality was excellent in my 15'X18' living room. I will have to live with the system a while to see what audio settings I prefer among the presets (Music, Movie, Panarama) and the PL II presets. There are lots of options to balance speaker outputs and adjust for "non-optimal" speaker placement (real rooms shared with spouses are not a blank sheet of paper for speaker placement!). The woofer has 4 presets--I preferred the heaviest of the settings (4). There are several different tone presets (hall, disco (?), live, clear, flat, heavy, etc.). The radio tuner is surprisingly good, with better FM reception than the Denon system I replaced. The features in the manual under DVD viewing are probably much more extensive than I will ever use--and are probably the most confusing for the rookie. Time will tell whether I will ever use them.

Despite the false start, I am pleased with Amazon's customer service, price and responsiveness. Looking forward to getting the most from this system.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good sound - Poor quality
Review: Good sound, easy to install and use. However it does have a build defect. After prolonged use it may overheat. As a result you will hear a very loud popping through speakers or system will shut down. Panasonic will not discuss defect, however my local Panasonic service center did comment they had seen a number of these returned for repair. There is also mention of individuals experiencing this issue on eCoustics.com. My service centers quote a 7 - 15 day wait to even look at the product, then additional time to fix. So I would look for a different product.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Cool speakers!
Review: Great looking speakers and they sound nice, too. The only reason that I am giving this product four stars is because of its manual. It definitely reads like some engineer wrote it. It will take me a while to figure out each button on the remote control. Other than that, I am really happy with the system.


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