Home Theater Systems
Cut the Cord

Les Bohony wanted to turn his living room into his own private theater. He wanted a sound system that would make him feel like he was right in the middle of whatever movie he was watching. He didn't, however, want to feel like he was right in the middle of a tangled nest of speaker cables.

Fortunately, Mr. Bohony has a new option -- a wireless surround-sound system. "I figured I'd be the guinea pig," says the 49-year-old engineer from Lumberton, N.J.

While products like giant flat-panel displays and DVD players have been getting most of the attention in the home-entertainment world, new audio products haven't been getting the same recognition.

One reason may be that most sound systems still rely on a mess of wires. Getting rid of some of those wires, says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at market-research firm Jupiter Media is a "pretty big breakthrough."

Surround sound has been used in movie theaters for years to make the on-screen action sound like it's happening right in the theater. When a plane flies overhead on screen, the sound moves from the speakers in front of the viewer to the speakers behind. Systems designed for home use arrived on the scene a few years ago and, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, 30% of U.S. households had some type of surround-sound setup in 2004. That's up 2% from the previous year, with steady annual increases of 2% for the past several years.

To sound some of these new systems out, we set up four different wireless surround products and asked two motion-picture sound editors to lend us their ears. Ron Bochar and Phil Stockton are co-founders of C5 Inc., a sound-mixing studio in New York. While judging, we watched scenes from Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," and the HBO series "Angels in America," both films they edited for sound.

Not Entirely Wireless

The most common type of home surround sound, called "5.1 Surround," uses five speakers and one subwoofer (a specialized speaker that adds bass and makes on-screen occurrences, such as explosions, sound more realistic). The front-left, front-center and front-right speakers go in front of the viewer; the rear-left and rear-right speakers are placed behind. The subwoofer can go anywhere, and usually is hidden in a corner.

It's those rear speakers, located across the room from the rest of the audio equipment, that are usually the problem. In the past, homeowners ran speaker cables under the rug -- or at greater expense, under the floorboards. But the new wireless-surround products have rear speakers that get their audio via a radio signal sent from a transmitter at the front of the room. Makers like Samsung and Kenwood released wireless systems in the last year, while JVC and Phillips say they're coming out with wireless models in 2005. Three out of four of Panasonic's new home-theater-in-a-box models now come with wireless capability (with the purchase of a separate $200 kit).

We found out right away that the term "wireless speakers" doesn't mean there aren't any wires involved. In all of our systems, the setup required plugging in a rear signal receiver and then running speaker cable from the receiver to the rear speakers. And the speakers still had to be plugged into an electrical outlet. In our living room, there was no outlet near the couch, so we had to run an extension cord across our living room floor to plug in the speakers.

Samsung's HT-DB390 system, which sells for around $500 (all prices are manufacturers' suggested retail), used color-coded plugs instead of the easily frayed speaker wire that bedevils many A/V setups. Like all our systems, the Samsung came with a stereo-sized component that incorporated a DVD and CD player, an amplifier and AM/FM tuner. But the Samsung's component box also had a built-in transmitter for the speakers (other models housed the transmitter in a separate box). Our untrained ears thought the system sounded good, but Mr. Bochar was upset when the sound of an angel's wings flapping in "Angels in America" -- which he proudly edited in -- wasn't there. Mr. Stockton thought the different channels of sound weren't well enough defined; he called it "homogenized."

The Kenwood HTB-S610DV, at around $600, was the most difficult to set up. Though all the pieces came in one box, the system came with five instruction manuals and two remotes, and its CD/DVD player was a separate component from the receiver. This meant that while the Samsung required only one power outlet near the TV, the Kenwood required four. Our testers said that the rear speakers sounded a little faint, but that the system's speakers were good for their small size.

The Midnight Crackle

Every room is different, but the surround-sound speakers we tested all claim to account for that by configuring their sound levels to whatever room they're in. Most systems guide the user through the setup with on-screen guides. Samsung's system came with a microphone that plugs into the receiver and automatically calibrates the speakers based on what it hears, making configuration a breeze.

The RCA RTD218, which runs around $350, came with tall, black, skinny wall-mountable front speakers and optional speaker stands that snap on. The RCA system's subwoofer doubled as its wireless antenna, which we questioned because people often like to hide subwoofers in places where radio reception usually isn't very good. Our testers thought the rear speakers were actually too loud according to the manufacturer's configuration and that the center channel was too weak.

Any wireless device that uses radio waves can be affected by interference from other devices in the home, and these systems are no exception. The RCA system woke us up in the middle of the night when it caught some interference and started crackling. Robert Harris of Somerville, Tenn., had problems using his cordless phone with his Kenwood system. "I'd be on the phone and the speakers would just start going nuts," the 59-year-old banker says. We tried out a wired system from Pioneer that sells for about $700, and while there was no interference, the sound quality wasn't any better than our wireless sets.

Panasonic's HT930, which retails for around $500, is a wired system that can go wireless with an additional $200 wireless adapter. We thought the speakers were too large, but as Mr. Stockton noted, "size does matter when it comes to speakers." Our testers, who used the wireless version, were impressed with the performance of the system and the booming bass from its subwoofer. "It's almost too much surround," said Mr. Bochar. In the end, however, it was enough to make the Panasonic their top choice.

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