Denon DHT-FS3 Home Theater in a Box
by Denon
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List Price: Category: Home Theater See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Denon DHT-FS3 Home Theater in a Box
Customer Review: Good value, but little surround
Summary: 4 Stars
The short: at $799 I'm not so sure. No brainer if you can get it for half that.
The long:
Surround: 2
Well, more than none, but a lot less than any 5.1 system. It's pretty evident that the sound is coming from the bar under your TV, with the occasional shadow of surround/spread sound. Then again, I'm using it in a large 20'x20' room. I'm sure you'd get fuller sound and better bounce/fill in a smaller space.
Sound quality: 4.5
Keeping in mind the configuration of the system (1.1) it sounds pretty dang good. I needed to set the bass to max for the sub to fill out my rather large space, but typical of Denon there's good crispness. Of course, you're missing that lower-mid oomph, but again, keep in mind the low profile and there's your tradeoff.
Form factor: 4
Slick cabinet, nice size for flat panel. Easily mountable to wall or even connected to the bottom of the TV if the TV's wall mounted (like mine is, on a swivel mount). Sub is fairly compact and would easily slide behind a sofa or chair.
Overall: 4
If I had paid $1200 for this I would have been disappointed (you can get a heck of a component system for $1200 these days). But at $428 with no tax and free shipping I'm pretty pleased. I would definitely recommend for someone with a smaller space who doesn't want to install 5.1 (or 6.1 or 7.1) and who can live with minimal surround.
Customer Review: good simple htib system
Summary: 4 Stars
The Good: looks great with black piano finish
easy setup with few wires
simple operation
excellent sound
can be mounted or just place on enclosed cradle in front of tv
The Bad: not much surround sound, you will hear some sounds coming at you
from the sides, but no rear sound detection.
on some tvs the remote sensor could be covered by the bar, be
sure and measure the height of your sensor.
expensive
Overall: very good sound, easy setup and operation, would be hard to
beat the quality of this if you want to avoid wires and other
complications of a true 5.1 system.
Customer Review: Great system for the money.
Summary: 4 Stars
Great system for the money. I knew and still know nothing about sound systems, but this was easy set up and works great.Customer Review: A great sound bar, but has one major flaw!
Summary: 3 Stars
I just received the FS3 today, & it is gorgeous! Our wonderful Pioneer 5.1 HTIB died recently after 10 years. Looked at a sound bar as a solution to not having wires running around the living room. We rent, so are limited as to what we can do with walls(or ceiling). It is truly a beautiful product. Would I pay $1200 for it compared with true surround systems? No. But under $400, it's a steal. Awesome sound out of it. A prior reviewer said the sound was terrible? They can't have adjusted the preset levels! Out of the box, they are all set to 0db. The menus are pretty easy to navigate. Took all of 10 minutes to set bass, treble, distance to listener, offset etc & to learn the codes of my Samsung T.V & Panasonic DVD player.
I tested it out with "Matrix" & "Top Gun". The sound is awesome. So crisp. The dialogue is easier to pick up than on my older Pioneer. The sub woofer is more than adequate for our living room (12 x 16). Very good center & side sound. Are you going to hear anything coming behind you? No, of course not. You can't change the laws of physics. You might get better results in an enclosed room where the sound can bounce around a little more. Our living room is fully open to the dining area.
One concern I had when looking at the FS3 online, was the positioning of the soundbar's inlets & outlets for cables. They are positioned under a rear shelf, facing downwards, not backwards/outwards. The unit comes with integrated feet(maybe 1/8'' tall). I was concerned that the optical cable especially, would be severely bent & possibly damaged over time in that position. All the cables are very bent once installed. The unit does come with 2 varying height sets of screw-in feet for raising the bar higher. I have a DLP T.V so have the bar sitting on top, due to cabinet constraints. Putting the feet on made it look ungainly(in a top mounted application). Called Denon support, & they assured me that it WAS designed to use just the integrated feet if that was what I wanted, & not to worry about the optical being bent at 90 degrees. Fingers crossed!' The omission of HDMI in this day & age is a little suprising, & I was almost put off by that, but the optical works great & we have no compatibility issues with our set-up so it's all good.
I would absolutely recommend this sound bar. Especially at the current sale price. It is so much better than $500 5.1 all in ones from L.G, Samsung etc. Their only advantage is rear facing sound. But the QUALITY of their sound is terrible. Light weight gutless speakers surrounding you is not necessarily a better thing!
UPDATE: 1/10/10 Have noticed that the system has some trouble with heavy horn(brass) & violin orchestral movie scores. Watched the original Star Trek movie & was getting a lot of distortion from the FS3. No amount of fine tuning with the settings would eradicate it completely. I had to change back the offset to center/neutral & change the room setting regarding the wall surface. This did make a difference but still had noticeable distortion. Bummer! I haven't had the system excessively loud either. Topped out at 25. The system can go to 33. I haven't experienced this issue with any of the later releases(movies) that I have watched. Also, the Pioneer had no issues with Star Trek's music score. Just a heads up for those of us that have older movie titles :) Also, what's up with the recent price increase! It's definitely not worth full retail. We bought ours from Amazon for $345 a couple of weeks ago!
2nd update: 7/13/10 The distortion is showing up on new movies as well now, damn it! This only happens with the music soundtrack. I called Denon support(again), & they suggested that I check the DVD settings, in case the sound output was preset to HDMI(it was). That helped some, but the distortion is still popping up depending on the pitch/tonality. They also said to replace the optical cable in case it was slightly defective. I'll try that next. The annoying thing is that I'll watch numerous movies with no problem, & then distortion/screeching! Again, this issue only arises with the music score. Dialogue, explosions, general sounds are not a problem at all...
3rd update: 9/29/10 After buying a new optical cable, the sound distortions dissipated. For a while. Scenes in "Avatar" where the system screeched at me, stopped. Great. Watched a movie from Netflix(a drama) & the Denon screeched at me again due to the music score #@%&! This is so frustrating! The Denon does everything else brilliantly but is so unreliable with the music scores of movies. In stereo mode, music is not an issue. It's only in movie mode, that it can't handle certain pitches/tones.
Customer Review: Great product, poor customer service.
Summary: 3 Stars
The Denon DHT-FS3 is a great surround sound compliment to a small room that doesn't allow many speakers and wires. In addition, it's the perfect solution for a large plasma television. The sound enhancement is fantastic and the sleak design is impressive. The downside is it's a littly pricey.
I must mention, however, that the customer service is absolutely terrible. I'm not sure if it was the holiday rush or the fact that they want to sell only to dealers, but my experience was less than impressive. I tried at least 10 times to speak live with a customer service support without success. I went so far as to leave two messages at the Denon corporate office for the customer service manager and other executives, but never received a return call.
Bottom line, the product is good but don't plan for any support. I was a first time and last time Denon customer with my purchase of the DHT-FS3.