The Sony HT-DDW750 is a great deal.
Written: May 02 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great sound! Relatively inexpensive
Cons: Not enough cables
The Bottom Line: This system is a great deal.
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| arthurmerlin's Full Review: Sony HT-DDW750 Theater System |
Quick Take:
This is a great, relatively inexpensive system. It will change the way you experience movies.
Details
The system specs are as follows (taken from box, manual, and website):
* 6 speakers / 575 total watts of power
* 100 watts x 5 channels (at 1,000 Hz into 8 ohms with 0.7 percent total harmonic distortion)
* 5 magnetically shielded speakers for front, center and rear (100 watts each)
* 75-watt subwoofer with 8-inch driver
* Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound for DVDs
* Dolby Pro Logic II for surround sound from any stereo source.
* What's included: Remote control, digital coaxial cable, RCA-type video cable, three 11.4-foot speaker wires, two 32.8-foot speaker wires, owner's manual
Further details:
* Tuner with 20 FM and 10 AM station presets
* Digital Cinema sound effect
* Optical and coaxial digital audio inputs (coax cable included)
* 2 pairs of analog audio inputs
* 3 audio/video inputs
* 1 pair of analog audio outputs
* 1 audio/video output
* l composite video output (for TV)
* Stereo headphone jack
* Includes all speaker wires
* Receiver is 17"W x 5.7"H x 11.7"D and weighs 15.4 pounds
* Each of the left front, right front and rear speakers is 3.5"W x 5.5"H x 4.9"D and weighs 1.7 pounds
* Center speaker is 9"W x 3.5"H x 5"D and weighs 2.2 pounds
* Subwoofer is 10.6"W x 12.8"H x 15.6"D and weighs 19.8 pounds
Experience
Let me warn you by saying that I am not an audio fanatic, or even a movie fanatic. I bought this as a gift for my brother while I was staying with him. But what I can say is that this system completely changed our movie watching experience.
The setup
Setting up the system was not particularly difficult, but it was complicated by the lack of cables included with the system. The only included cable of use to us was the coax connection for the DVD digital audio output. We had to somehow figure out a way to wire everything else up. This took about 30 minutes of creative thinking and tinkering. I would strongly recommend buying a few extra audio and video cables prior to doing this. Otherwise, the setup was quite intuitive. You can pretty much send everything you have through the Sony system (e.g. VCR, DVD, Cable, TiVo, etc).
It can take care of the audio, AND also route the video signal to your TV, too.
Sound
Once we had set it up, we tried it out on the Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition DVD (using our Apex DVD player). We had to fiddle with the DVD player a little to get it to produce raw DTS digital audio output through the digital coax cable, but that was not too difficult. Once we had it working.... Wow. In fact, Wow. It really was like watching it in the theatre. The orcs were attacking from behind; voices were moving from left to right; the music was thundering all around. The main disadvantage is that, like in the theatre, the volume keeps changing. So unless you keep adjusting the volume, you can't hear the dialogues without listening to deafening music at other times. This might upset your neighbors if you live in an apartment complex with thin walls.
Sad Ending
As I mentioned earlier, this was a gift for my brother, so I only enjoyed it for a week or so while I was visiting him. Now I really miss it. The DTS audio input makes all the difference. I am pretty likely to end up gifting this system to myself soon....
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
arthurmerlin
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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