Digital Trends

I've just nailed Eudora's send button with a click, sending a ganged review of home-theater-in-a-box systems to my editor at a major men's magazine. In the normal course of things I don't go out of my way looking for excuses to review these things—let alone review a whole bunch of them at once. But the muse beckoned, strongly backed up by the state of my checking account, and soon my wisdom will hit newsstands on beautifully designed pages scented with men's cologne.

Why wouldn't a tech critic who specializes in home theater want to review HTiBs? Look at this way. Any literary critic worth his salt would want to review the latest from Neal Stephenson—whose three-volume Baroque Cycle I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the history of technology and some ripping yawns—as opposed to some first-time novel from a well-meaning English professor. A rap or rock critic will be more interested in the latest chart toppers than The Best of Cher. Movie buffs have better things to chatter about than the Olsen Twins. Oenophiles avoid jug wine. Food critics don't spend much time at Burger King.

I care enough about home theater to want my readers to buy the best stuff they can get their hands on. In the real world, where none of us have the kind of folding money we dream of, that might mean a $500 receiver and an above-average sat/sub set, and I review these things with a passion, in addition to pricier products.

However, when I contemplate the HTiB category, a red flag looms. You can scale down the home theater experience only so much before the whole thing just becomes a waste of money. I don't want my readers buying junk, seeing and hearing it for what it is, then losing interest in home theater altogether.

Here are the cons. Most HTiB systems include a DVD-receiver and powered sub—although if all 5.1 channels of amplification reside in the sub, as often happens, it's really more of a DVD-preamp-surround-processor and sub-amp-module. Anyway, DVD drives have moving parts and die faster than other parts of the system. When the drive goes, that's it—your system's dead.

When you're fitting that system into your living room you may be in for another rude awakening. You might decide to run longer speaker cables than the ones supplied—match the gauge number and you're good to go. However it's more than likely that the interface between DVD-preamp-surround-processor and sub-amp-module is a proprietary ribbon cable that can't be lengthened, shortened, or replaced. Oh, your dog chewed it? Too bad, so sad—your system's dead.

Now you understand one of the chief advantages of buying a real component system. Even if the components are cheap, they can be replaced. The upgrade path is a wide open road. There's always hope.

No matter where in an HTiB system the amps are located, they're likely to be underpowered. You get what you pay for. And it's hard to build high-quality power-sucking amps into a compact system. As a result, most HTiBs can't deliver a Lord of the Rings battle scene unless you turn them up to somewhere between 75 and 95 percent of their total volume capability. This leaves little headroom and the result is clipping and distortion. You may be able to crank it as loud as you need, but ow, ow, ow!

Got a rack full of legacy components? You may be able to plug some of them in, but not all.