Excellent starter system for a very reasonable price
Written: Apr 23 '00 (Updated Apr 23 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Included VR407 receiver is top-notch
Cons: Poor remote design; speakers merely average
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| david_ogren's Full Review: Kenwood HTB-502 |
The HTB-503 is the successor to the HTB-502 and is an excellent mid-range starter system. I recently needed to replace my home stereo system and began shopping around the web for a starter system for a home theater. Here were my basic requirements:
1. It needed to be reasonably affordable. I have other things I'd to spend my money on and didn't want to buy features just because they were "cool". And I certainly didn't need enough power to blow the doors out: I still live in an apartment complex.
2. The receiver had to be able to last a long time. I knew that eventually I'd decide to upgrade at least some of the speakers, but I wanted to be able to keep the receiver indefinitely. That meant that receiver should have a Dolby Digital decoder, and preferably a DTS decoder as well.
3. For the same reason, the receiver should be able to handle a large and wide variety of inputs. I'm already starting to have devices that are capable of digital output and S-Video output. I didn't want to be forced into an inferior type of cabling because of my receiver capabilities.
4. It need to have speakers good enough that I wouldn't have to immediately replace them. I new that I wouldn't get great speakers in a starter system, but they had to be good enough to last at least a little while until I was willing to pay for something better.
After a good amount of comparison shopping I decided on the Kenwood HTB-502. The VR-407 included with the HTB-502 is a top-notch receiver. And the speakers, although unremarkable, are still better than most of the starter system speakers I looked at. At least until you started looking at $1,000 systems. Let's look at how the HTB-502 matches my requirements:
1. The HTB-502 cost me $500, less than the majority of home theater systems. Especially in comparison to systems with equivalent features.
2. The VR-407 receiver had lots of features to make it obsolescence proof. It has a Dolby Digital decoder as well as a DTS decoder. This will allow me to keep up with the latest advances in DVD technology.
3. The VR-407 receiver has plenty of inputs and outputs. It has seven analog audio inputs, three analog audio outputs, four S-Video inputs, two S-Video outputs, a digital six-channel input for a DVD player, plus four additional digital inputs (two coax, two optical). More than I'll probably ever need and certainly enough to take full advantage of most modern DVD players.
4. The speakers were better than average for a starter system in this price range. Although I'll probably want to replace the front speakers with some floor standing speakers eventually, I can definitely live with these speakers for the time being.
On the downside, I hate the remote. It's small with tiny buttons and the layout isn't intuitive at all. But that's a pretty easy solution to fix in today's world of universal remotes.
The only other minor problem was that I was disappointed in the amount of speaker cable they provided. Although I was planning on buying some better quality cable anyway, it was disappointing that they provided such a small amount of cable for the surround sound speakers. (I think that they provided 5 meters, although that's just an estimate.)
THE BOTTOM LINE
Although I'm certainly not the world's biggest audiophile, this starter system was enough to get me started in the home theater world. Combined with a new pair of front channel speakers this system would provide a top notch mid-range home theater system for a great price.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
david_ogren
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Member: David Ogren
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 13 members
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