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4.0 stars
"Big Sound, Small Package, Clean Lines"
Pros: Clean, all black look. Great Sound- front surround and 2-ch options.
Cons: No HDMI inputs, not a blue-ray or HD-dvd player.
Summary: I really like this little system, and I'm surprised that CNET's editors haven't got their hands on it yet. Sony seems to have taken care of most of the gripes with their previous 2.1 systems. Its the perfect compliment to a flat screen and an apartment where you cant have wires everywhere- but its still loud enough to keep the neighbors up!
The unit sounds great for TV, movies, or music. The artificial surround mode sounds great on movies and TV, but not so much for music. But there's also an option to run the system in a 2-channel stereo mode, which sounds great for music. The unit also remembers different settings for different inputs-so the input that I have my airport express hooked up to is always in 2-channel and the input for TV is always in surround- no having to remember to switch the setting. There's also a cool feature called "night mode" which is great for apartment dwellers because it isolates dialogue and suppresses background noise-meaning you can hear whats going on in the movie without annoying your neighbors late at night.
Sony has some adapters that can plug into the head unit for media streaming, but I haven't tried those, so I cant tell you about them. It would be nice if it had a built in media streamer though.
Also, my other gripe is that there is no HDMI switching. It would be nice to have some HDMI inputs and have all video go through the unit (that way the volume indicator would always show up on screen too).
I bought it online from J&R. I had no problems with them. They seemed to be the most reputable dealer with the lowest price and they shipped it from NY to Seattle pretty fast and cheap.
I definitely recommend this unit if you are in the market for a 2.1 system.Updated
EDIT: When I bought this, it was $699 at J&R. They seemed to have raised the price since, but I'm sure you can still find it somewhere for this price, maybe J&R will still offer a lower price if you call....
