This is a great piece of kit for any movie lover. It’s stylish and kicks out excellent sound quality.
The unit comes in silver and is a compact design. It connects via phono sockets to your sound outputs e.g. TV, Video, Sky and Games Console. The DVD connects via Scart or Svideo sockets to your TV. The subwoofer is quite large and needs to sit on the floor the speakers are small satellite ones which can be discretely placed around your living room. Speaker Cable is high quality and is really long with nice little connecting plugs so no frayed wires. This unit can be used in any size room, as everything is fully adjustable. The unit comes with all connections. The instruction manual is very in depth but helpful.
The home theatre kit provides you with a DVD player, Dolby Digital 5.1 surround system sound and it doubles up as a Hi fi.
The DVD player function is top quality with a razor sharp image. The player has all your basic functions e.g. play, stop, pause, fast forward, rewind and skip but also has additional functions such as angle and zoom. It plays Region 2 DVD’s although you can buy a multi region version for a few quid extra. It does play DVDR’s as well. Overall as a DVD player it’s excellent picture quality and easy to use.
The Surround Sound System is Dolby Digital 5.1 so it’s basically 5 speaker channels and one Subwoofer. The set up by 3 front speakers, 2 at back and a sub for base for perfect surround sound.
It kicks out around 300 watts believe me it’s powerful. The volume goes from 0 – 40 if you are listening to something on 20 most things in your house are vibrating. The surround sound system is easy to set up, as there is an on screen menu wear you put the distance you are from each speaker to ensure the correct volume. Each speaker has an individual volume level and graphic equalizer including the sub so you can adjust to your liking. There are several sound modes you can use to create the perfect sound depending on what you are listening to. These are Normal, Surround, Cinema Studio A, Cinema Studio B, Cinema Studio C, Virtual Surround 1, Virtual Surround 2, Hall, Jazz Club, House and Game.
The sound is crisp and clear and if you are watching or listening to something you feel like you are there. For example if you watch and explosion not only can you hear the sound around you but you also feel the vibration from the base box as it rumbles. If you are listening to music it sounds live.
The Hi fi function is basically the doubling up of the DVD drive using it as a CD player. It will play all your music CD’s but not CDR’s or MP3’s.
The CD mode has all normal CD player functions play, stop, pause, fast-forward, rewind and skip. You can also from the remote select the tracks number you want play. As a CD player it well. The Hi fi function also has a radio function allowing you to listen to AM, MW and FM radio bands. You can preset you favourite channels in the remote.
Overall a top quality system costing around £200 to £250 from most electrical stores. Newer models I believe have the capability of playing back other formats.
Sony DAV-S 550 video review
