Samsung HT-X200R - 2.1 ch - Designer Home Cinema System - With HDMI - Gloss Black

After having my BOSE Acoustimass speakers and dedicated Yamaha Home Cinema amp for a number of years I decided to sell-off most of my Home Cinema kit on Ebay along with my 500+ DVD collection and scale down my expensive habbit (Well we have a baby on the way in December and priorities change).

So I sold all my precious gear and decided my scale down would be extreme and I'd go from a full-on 5.1 system to a minimalistic 2.1 virtual surround HTIB (Home Theatre in a Box). So the search began to find a syetem that would easily intergrate with my Sky+ HD box and that had auido inputs for my computer.

In the end this litle Sammy won! Not only does this kit look the business it really does pack a punch with it's diminutive speakers and piano black bass. I'd recommend pumping up the volume at the start as most passive bass units need to be driven well for a while to get them running at full performance, my £800 Bose speakers were just the same!

The sound is very clear and I'd dissagre with some reviews that say it sounds too harsh. I'd say this is one of the most natural sounding systems I test drove. The sub adds a good level of bass to music and movies alike. Be careful with some external inputs though! My PC had extra bass setting switched on in iTunes and Windows Media Player which went way over what was required and made the bass sound disconnected from the main left and right channels.

So it sounds great but what about the picture. Well with this little beauty you've got HDMi output with upscaling to 720p and 1080i and Farroujia (probably spelt wrong)DCDi deinterlacing which can offer a better and sharper picture on LCD and Plasma TVs. You've got component output too, but no upscaling through this mode, which is a shame. There are some remote control hacks for other Samsung upscaling DVDs that turn this option back on but I've found nothing for this model yet! The picture looked great on my Evesham 37" LCD TV but the upscaling will never give you true Hi-Def from standard DVD sources but 720p does give a slight picture improvement over the PAL 576p standard on my TV.

There's enough inputs for a standard install. As mentioned above I have my Sky+ HD box linked to the Digital Optical audio input for sound. There is no HDMi pass through on this unit though, you just get a HDMi output for whatever the DVD is playing! I've got my computer connected to the RCA left and right AUX 2 inputs and a Creative Zen Vision plugged into the side AUX 1 with an audio jack. The unit also has a USB port which will accept some, but not many, pen drives and MP3 players. My Zen would not work through this connection!

My only gripe would be the lack of control over the trebble and bass, There's none! This is very odd for any system and can be limiting if you get a DVD or CD with overtly strong bass. The 2.1 Virtual Surround can be pretty good at times with the right material but can just sound echoey on standard stereo feeds. To be honest this will never be as good as a proper 5.1 and my old system was better, but I knew it would be. Don't expect miracles and you'll be pleasantly surprised with this super HTIB set-up.

Oly Scott

Fantastic appearance! Has taken design and engineering showcase honors in 2007. The HT-X200R combines the convenience of the multi disc playback capability, inlcuding DVD-AUDIO, DVD-VIDEO, CD, MP3-CD, WMA-CD, DivX, CD-R/RW and DVD+_ R/RW, with a sophisticated FM tuner, all in a single player. Experience the super high quality audio performance of DVD-Audio. The on-board 24-bit/192kHz DAC enables this player to deliver exceptional sound quality in terms of dynamic range, low-level resolution and high-frequency detail. You can also connect and play files from external USB storag devices such as MP3 players, USB flash memory etc, using the Home Theater's USB HOST function. Power saving function, the HT-X200R automatically switches itslef off after 20 minutes in Stop mode. The HT200R allows you to select your favourite image during JPEG, DVD playback and set it as youyt background wallpaper.

The system looks very good and plays well except for one very irritating feature/fault? the player stops and drops the resolution and starts again? it does this about an hour into the DVD sometimes two or three times? Samsung HT-X200R - 2.1 ch - Designer Home Cinema System - With HDMI - Gloss Black