After getting a HDTV monitor for my home theater setup, my old 32 inch Toshiba TV/Monitor was sent to a basement room. I quickly found watching TV downstairs through the TV speakers unbearable.

I looked at several Home Theater in a Box systems, both with and without integrated DVD players. The Toshiba SD -43 HT was by far the best value for the price.

The system comes complete with Dolby 5.1 surround sound receiver, 6 speakers, remote control and color coded wires to connect all the speakers.

This is a compact unit, about 14 inches wide by 14.5 inches deep and only 3 inches high. It is not a high powered unit, but has enough power for a small or medium sized room.

In addition to Dolby 5.1 channel decoding from DVDs, it also has Dolby pro-logic decoding for the auxiliary inputs with several selectable sound modes (cinema, pro logic, music, and matrix) as well as plain stereo.

It has one digital optical audio input and 2 analog audio inputs. It has one composite video output, one s-video output and one set of progressive scan component video outputs.

It has two composite video inputs, but their signal is only output through the composite video output.

There is also a connection for AM and FM antennas.

The sound is quite good for the price, but speaker placement and proper speaker level setting through the setup menu is essential.

The unit plays commercial DVDs as well as DVD+R and DVD+RW as well as CDs including CD-R discs containing MP3 or Windows Media Audio music files.





Recommended: Yes