Knowing how deep a spell all-in-one home theater systems have cast over DVD fans everywhere, we decided to divine just how much magic was hidden within four such systems: the Denon DHT-1000DV ($1,300), Panasonic SC-ST1 ($1,000), Sharp SD-AT50DV ($800), and Yamaha DVX-S100 ($800). Judging from their sensational styling, myriad features, and reasonable prices, the companies that conjured these packages into existence have kept nothing up their collective sleeves.
But what really matters is how they perform once you pop in a DVD, so I enlisted the aid of the second Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. If any of these systems still enchanted me when the closing credits rolled, there was a good chance it could convince any magic-deprived muggles out there that it would bring their movies and music to life.
The Denon DHT-1000DV most resembles a conventional component system, while the Panasonic SC-ST1 and Yamaha DVX-S100 both show a real flair for flashy design. With its slim, vertical orientation, the Panasonic unquestionably wins the styling award, while the Yamaha takes the prize for ease of installation. It might have a separate DVD player and a control unit, but the Sharp system is so compact that it qualifies as a home theater version of the popular executive desktop audio systems.
Good looks aren’t the only thing these systems have in common—they each have six speakers, including a subwoofer, and share a lot of the same features. All provide everything you need to enjoy a DVD or CD within an hour after you open the box. For instance, they all include a minimum of 10 feet of cable to go from the control unit to the front speakers and at least 30 feet for the surround speakers.
All four systems have Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel decoding, and all offer a progressive-scan component-video output as well as composite- and S-video. All include digital audio inputs and outputs for CD and MiniDisc (MD) recorders, although you’ll need a Y adapter to connect a recorder to the Sharp. The control units with the Denon and Yamaha systems have enough inputs and outputs so you can connect both a VCR and a satellite receiver. And the remote controls supplied with each system will also operate your TV—the Denon and Yamaha remotes even let you operate other components.
The lengthy instruction manuals explain not only how to assemble the systems, but also how to access and adjust essential settings (like screen aspect ratio) and the numerous bonus features meant to enhance the quality of your audio or video. The Denon and Sharp also include quick setup/speaker-placement guides. None of the manuals are as spellbinding as a Harry Potter book, and some make Rules of the Road seem lively.
For each system, I connected the progressive-scan component-video output to my 42-inch Toshiba widescreen rear-projection HDTV monitor. I placed the front left/right speakers about 9 inches to either side of the TV and the center speaker on top. All of the surrounds were positioned to the sides and slightly behind the listening position in my 15 x 24-foot home theater. I placed the subwoofer to the left of the TV, near the corner.
Panasonic SC-ST1
Bang & Olufsen, eat your heart out—the innovative Panasonic SC-ST1 looks that good. It’s the only system here to come in two boxes—one for the control unit mounted on its floor stand and the other for the speakers. The eye-pleasing main unit, which is about the size of a violin case but thinner, houses all the control functions and a front-loading disc player. Since Panasonic assumes you’ll typically operate the system using the 54-key remote control, there are only 12 keys on top of the unit. To keep it slim, the amplifiers are relegated to the compact subwoofer enclosure.
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To deal with all of those formats, the SC-ST1 has an exceptional number of multilayered onscreen menus. It also offers no fewer than four digital video noise-reduction modes (with three or four steps each), five picture modes (Soft, Fine, Mellow, Sharp, and Normal), a choice between interlaced and progressive-scan video (with one video and two film modes), and contrast, brightness, sharpness, color, and gamma controls, which you normally expect to find on a TV. There are also five picture presets: Standard TV (that is, direct-view), CRT Projector, LCD TV/Projector, Plasma, and Projection TV. There’s no explanation as to whether you should use CRT Projector or Projection TV with a tube-based rear-projection set, so I used the Projection TV setting.
Along with Dolby Digital, DTS, and Dolby Pro Logic (but not Pro Logic II), Panasonic provides its own Super Surround, seven synthesized ambience modes, and two degrees of Center Focus to enhance movie dialogue. There are also three levels of something called Re-master, which Panasonic says improves treble playback from standard CDs and restores the high frequencies that are lost in MP3 and WMA encoding.
Given all of the other controls, it’s surprising that the system doesn’t let you set precise speaker levels and delay times. You can roughly balance the surrounds with the front channels, however, and set delays for the center and surround channels in large increments. You could physically set up the system in 20 minutes, even with the unlabeled speaker cables, but it might take an hour to click through the maze of onscreen menus.
The speaker cables are basic narrow-gauge wire with easily distinguishable untinned copper and aluminum conductors to keep the phasing straight. All of the speakers, except the sub, have spring-clip terminals. Assuming that you can tell the long cables from the short ones, Panasonic doesn’t label them for their respective positions, and none of them are terminated with any sort of plugs. The control unit connects to the subwoofer through a thick cable with computer-style multipin D plugs—the same cable also powers the player/receiver.
The clearly labeled remote control has logically arrayed keys in three shapes, with a large enter key surrounded by four cursor keys. The relatively small keys are spaced far enough apart even for fat fingers.
After setting all of the controls to normal except the subwoofer level, which I set to its maximum, I let Harry Potter play Quiddich in my theater. The video impressed me more than the audio. There were no obvious picture artifacts no matter how fast Harry zoomed or the camera panned. The colors were solid, and the deeply saturated hues showed little noise. Impressive details punctuated every scene. For instance, the fine strands of Hermione’s hair were clearly visible in the scene just before the Quiddich match. And the transition between layers on the DVD was almost imperceptible—a nice change from many players I’ve used.
The audio was clean with a modest upper-midrange peak. The surround effects spun my head as the rogue Bludger ball tore around the stadium. But the surround speakers had fairly narrow dispersion, so there was some localization. Pointing the speakers slightly away from the listening position helped. The Chamber of Secrets creaks and rattles with subtle effects ranging from chains to birdcages, and the Panasonic clanged and pinged faithfully. This system played at a respectable level, but not with the boneshaking, earthquaking intensity often associated with home theater.
Since the SC-ST1 plays DVD-Audio discs, I gave the DVD-A release of Neil Young’s Harvest a spin. The lush sound totally surrounded me, and at higher levels than when playing Harry Potter. But the disc’s strange mix made me feel like I was inside Young’s head, with his voice seeming to come at me at the same level from all five speakers. And I had to turn down the subwoofer a couple of notches to maintain a reasonable tonal balance.
Because I’ve heard her in person many times and am very familiar with her voice, I used Dar Williams’s new CD, The Beauty of the Rain, for my two-channel listening. Surprisingly, the music sounded much smoother and more natural in Super Surround than in two-channel stereo. For the same amount of money, you could get a better-sounding two-channel music system, but you wouldn’t be getting the SC-ST1’s respectable surround sound capabilities—and probably not its style.
Denon DHT-1000DVThe DHT-1000DV is the most conventional of the systems here, with the receiver/player resembling Denon’s separate components combined in a single package. The player handles plain DVDs, CDs, and CD-R/RWs. The handsome main unit—the largest and heaviest among these four systems—has a mirrored front-panel display, 13 keys, and two knobs. Unlike the Panasonic, Sharp, and Yamaha systems, the Denon has a passive subwoofer, with all the amplifiers in the player/receiver.
So you won’t leave fingerprints on the speakers’ satiny black surfaces, white cotton gloves greet you when you open the box. The speakers, which employ multiway gold-plated binding posts, are about the size of a small loaf of bread, with curved sides that almost come to a point at the rear. Since the center speaker’s size and shape make it difficult to position atop a TV, Denon provides a stand that allows for secure positioning on even narrow-framed sets. The compact, front-ported subwoofer is styled to match the satellites.
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The remote control has mostly identical keys, with a large glow-in-the-dark cursor pad in the center. While the critical on and off keys are red, and the three keys that let you switch between the DHT-1000DV and other components are blue, all of the others are white. The on key and the numeric keypad are clearly labeled on the buttons themselves, but the other keys have hard-to-read labels on the body of the remote. And since the remote’s layout isn’t entirely intuitive, I found myself doing a lot of hunting and pecking.
The Denon had the most convenient setup menus of any of the four systems. You can choose between its default small, medium, and large room sizes and indicate whether you’re seated in the center or the back, or you can tell the receiver how far (in feet) your seat is from the front and surround speakers. (You can’t make independent settings for the left and right speakers, though, if your layout is asymmetrical.) You can also adjust levels for each speaker, even pausing the test tone on each channel.
Unusual for an HTiB system, the Denon offers Dolby Pro Logic II (DPL II) in both Cinema and Music modes. You can adjust the Music mode to determine how much sound is sent to the surround channels, where you want the center of the sound field positioned between the front and back of the room, and how wide you want the center image. Of course, the DHT-1000DV also has the usual simulated sound fields and ambience settings derived through digital signal processing (DSP), including an effective five-channel stereo mode.
On the video side, Denon gives you the choice of Sharp, Soft, and Custom presets, and lighter or darker black level, along with contrast, brightness, hue, sharpness, and gamma settings. (You can save the contrast, brightness, hue, and sharpness settings for interlaced playback and sharpness and gamma for progressive playback.)
The DHT-1000DV produced slightly soft images, with a bit of noise in the dark areas and deeper colors. Also, colors overall were moderately saturated. I experimented with the light and dark black-level settings, which you can access only while a DVD is playing, but could see little difference. The player’s transition between disc layers, however, was barely perceptible.
When it came to surround sound, the Denon did a better job than any of the other systems in making my room feel like a movie theater, delivering sound that had real depth, breadth, and heft. It also revealed details without any noticeable upper-midrange or treble boost. Not only did the clocks in Professor Dumbledore’s antechamber tick clearly, but I could hear the slight reverberation of the ticks off the room’s stone walls. When Harry and Ron’s flying car was caught in the Whomping Willow tree, the boffo bass helped give it the coup de grâce, and it also lent thunder to the steam locomotive that drives the Hogwarts Express.
The DHT-1000DV is a first-class music system, sounding as good in two-channel stereo as in multichannel Pro Logic II—and that’s not knocking the Pro Logic. The stereo image was natural, with very good depth and breadth, but with DPL II the whole room seemed to come alive. The Denon system produced well-balanced, smooth sound even at impressive volumes, and it could pump out plenty of bass. Transient sounds were clean and immediate, but without any artificial treble boost. Because I could hear the nuances, Dar Williams’s voice on The Beauty of the Rain sounded more seductive on this system than on any of the others here. This is the Dar I remember hearing sing in my studio at WFMT in Chicago.
Yamaha DVX-S100The novel styling of the Yamaha DVX-S100 includes a thin, wedge-shaped, brushed-aluminum front panel that stretches across about three-quarters of the main unit’s sloping top. Below that, a black plastic display extends across the entire width. The brushed-aluminum panel contains the disc-loading tray and nine highly polished control keys. There are eight more keys on the sloping top. Around back, the main unit has line-level outputs for each channel in case you want to use an amplifier other than the one contained in the subwoofer.
The four silvery plastic left/right speakers, which taper slightly toward the back, are designed to stand on end and have brackets for stand or wall placement. The similarly styled, slender center speaker should fit easily on top of virtually any TV. The subwoofer, which is about the size of a carry-on suitcase, contains all of the amplifiers and attaches to the control unit with a round multipin DIN connector. Color-coded speaker cables connect to the satellites with spring clips and to the sub by large square plugs. The plugs have clips within, so you can substitute your own speaker cables. Setup was quick and easy.
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Like the Panasonic system, the DVX-S100 can play DVD-Audio discs, and it’s the only one here that can play recordable discs in the DVD+RW format. Using the Disc Direct function lets you bypass all processing circuitry when listening to DVD-Audio discs and standard CDs—considering this system’s excess of functions, that’s an advantage.
When it came time to tweak the system for playback, I became frustrated while trying to work my way through and use the setup menus. Trying to do something as simple as listen to straight Dolby Digital 5.1 turned out not to be so simple. The DVX-S100 offers so many options that you might have to select several to achieve a given goal. Some menus still eluded me even after hours of experimentation.
For instance, you can have your Dolby Digital or DTS in Movie Theater 1 or 2 mode with Spectacle, Sci-Fi, Adventure, General, Normal, or Enhanced settings. What if the sci-fi film you want to watch is an adventurous spectacle? What’s a viewer to do? More standard choices include Film vs. Video and lighter or darker black level. The system includes Faroudja’s acclaimed DCDi—Directional Correlational Deinterlacing—to eliminate the jagged edges that appear when you watch standard interlaced video that’s been line doubled for a progressive-scan display.
The DVX-S100 provides DPL II and matrix 6.1-channel surround from either Dolby Digital or DTS sources. There’s also Yamaha’s usual wide range of ambience modes, including some designed for videogames and TV sports. A Virtual Cinema mode creates a surround effect using only the front left/right speakers, while Silent Cinema does the same for headphone listening. You can set the delays for any of the 34 audio modes from 5 to 45 milliseconds.
The DVX-S100 displayed some of the richest, most saturated colors I’ve seen in an HTiB system. In The Chamber of Secrets, Mrs. Weasley’s dress and her knitting yarn were vibrant. The Yamaha system’s punched-up green was most evident in the flue-powder fire and in the pastoral fields Harry and the Weasley brothers drive over in the enchanted car. Scenes were murky when I used the darker black-level setting, but never noisy. Otherwise the picture was highly satisfying—smooth and free of noticeable artifacts. There was a split-second pause as the player changed layers on the disc.
The audio was just as vibrant as the video. There was plenty of bass for the Hogwarts Express and the Whomping Willow—but if you’re insatiable, the remote includes a bass-boost button. Dialogue was clear, with a subtle upper-midrange peak but no sibilance or other treble irritations. The ticking of the clocks in Professor Dumbledore’s anteroom sounded distinct and natural, as did the crackling of flames in many scenes. And I was able to play the system fairly loud before any obvious distortion set in.
Once again, I invited Neil Young into my theater to test the Yamaha’s DVD-Audio capabilities. While I can’t resolutely say the sound put CD to shame, it was superb. The thwack of the drums on “Out on the Weekend” was solid and defined, and the overall tonal balance was smooth. But the disc’s screwy mix had my head spinning just as much as when I heard it on the Panasonic system. While the drums were locked into position in the left front and rear, Neil’s indeterminate position somewhere over to the right had me feeling like I was channeling him.
I first listened to the Dar Williams disc with the Yamaha set to Pro Logic II. The synthesized 5.1-channel surround playback filled the room with a grand wash of sound, but straight two-channel stereo CD playback sounded good as well. The imaging wasn’t as solid and centered as it was with the Denon and Sharp systems, though. The upper-midrange rise was most noticeable on Dar’s voice, but not obvious enough to detract from the pleasure of listening to her sing.
Sharp SD-AT50DVSharp really thought things through when designing the SD-AT50DV system. Placed side by side, the ST-AT50 control unit and DX-AT50 disc player take up about the same space as a standard component. Slight indentations on top of each unit help them nestle together when stacked, and it doesn’t matter which one is on top and which is on bottom. There are even plastic stands so you can position them on their sides, as long as the readouts are on top.
Each front panel has a 1 1/4 x 2-inch sky-blue backlit LCD and a minimal number of control keys—five on the main unit and six on the player. You can operate the system without using the onscreen displays, and, in fact, you have to use the LCDs for audio settings such as speaker levels and delays since these aren’t available onscreen.
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The five silver plastic satellite speakers—the smallest in this roundup—are about the size and shape of a one-pint Chinese-food take-out container. They have screw holes in the bottom for mounting adapters, but no keyholes on the back for wall hanging. The color-coded speaker cables have tinned bare leads on one end for connection to the spring clips on the satellites and small rectangular plugs for connection to the sub. The subwoofer fires downward for increased placement flexibility.
The longest remote control of the group looks deceptively simple with its unusually large cursor pad surrounded by four bright-blue arrow keys. The straight columns of identical gray control keys would be confusing to deal with if there were more of them, but many of the keys, including the numeric keypad and a second cursor set, are hidden under a slide-down cover on the back of the remote. While all the keys are small, they’re so sparse that you won’t be intimidated. But if you try to use both sides of the remote at once, you’re likely to accidentally press a lot of keys.
The Sharp offers the fewest bells and whistles of any of the systems here beyond Dolby Digital, DTS, and DPL II. Like the Yamaha, it features Faroudja’s DCDi video circuit for eliminating jagged edges on interlaced images converted to progressive-scan format. You can choose only between the usual aspect ratios, a pair of black-level settings, and Movie or Music settings of Sharp’s own Dynamic Sound ambience mode. The built-in test tone lets you precisely adjust the level and delay for each speaker—a feature missing on some of the more expensive systems.
While the Sharp system lacked the impressive detail and overall depth of color of the Panasonic SC-ST1, it presented the fairy-tale wash of color inherent in The Chamber of Secrets with only subtle noise in dark backgrounds and minimal artifacts. Professor McGonagall’s wrinkles, for instance, were clearly visible. While the player didn’t stumble between disc layers, subtitles mysteriously appeared for a moment and then vanished.
Even though you’ll want to watch movies on this system, you might want to check it out initially with your eyes closed since it sounds much larger than its tiny satellites would suggest. The subwoofer does a very good job with the low-frequency hums and booms, and while it can’t go super low, it gave plenty of authority to the rumble of the Hogwarts Express and the thrashing of the Whomping Willow tree as it pounded the magic car. Subtle high-frequency transients, like the clicks of knitting needles and the ticks of the Weasley’s clocks, came through without calling attention to themselves. Dialogue was always clear and smooth.
As I’d expect from small satellites with minimal baffles, the system sculpted a very solid two-channel stereo image when I played the Dar Williams CD. What I didn’t expect was their uncommonly smooth sound. Her voice retained its fullness and slight huskiness without sibilance or tinniness. The flip side of that coin, though, was a slight lack of articulation on the transients. Raising the volume made the system sound strident and harsh, but switching in Pro Logic II opened up the sound field while removing the edginess.
These systems share one flaw that resembles Harry’s ability to speak with snakes—they have more abilities than may be desirable. And like the spells Ron attempts to cast with his fractured wand, the intended action can cause unintended results. Does anyone truly need more than half a dozen video modes or a score of audio modes?
All four systems can perform their share of audio and video magic. The Denon entranced me with its pure audio, while the Panasonic edged out the Yamaha ever so slightly for best picture quality. The Yamaha and the Sharp offer exceptional value, while the Panasonic makes a styling statement that few if any other systems in this price range can equal. And its integral stands provide great convenience. When you open the box of any of these systems you won’t find a chamber of secrets, just good solid technology that can transform nearly any room of your home into a theater. And since you’re more likely to use one of these in a smaller space like a bedroom or home office, you might find more than one room of your home transformed into a magical movie retreat.