Surprisingly solid for the money
Written: Jul 21 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Performance for price (Audio and Video!), DVD-Audio playback, Compact size, surround feature-set for price.
Cons: Fiddly, cheap-feeling remote without universal capability, Only two inputs, crummy wire/speakers are weakest link.
The Bottom Line: Won't replace seperate components, or beat expensive HT-In-A-Box systems, but overall performance is surprisingly good. VERY recomended in it's price range.
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| jawzx's Full Review: Zenith DVT316 Theater System |
A freind of mine bought a Zenith DVT316 DVD home theater in a box on clearance for the ridiculously low price of $129. The amazing thing is that it doesn't suck. The main unit is solidly constructed, and well put together, the speakes, though somewhat ugly, are also solid, weighty, and confidence inspiring. All the satellites are even tapped for screw-on and key-hole wall mounting, and have brass nut-inserts for mounting bolts! The subwoofer feels a little light and boomy, but amazingly doesn't sound bad until pushed quite hard.
OK, so it's put together well, but what else does it have going for it? How about gold plated input and output RCA jacks, Progressive scan outputs, DVD-Audio playback support, and Standard pinch-type speaker terminals that allow you use better wire than the copper string they give you with the system, or discard the included speakers and use something else entirely, which might not be a bad idea, as the speakers seem to be the weakest part of the system (which as a whole still isn't that bad!)
The DVD-Audio support really surprised me in a system this inexpensive. It doesn't flaunt the fact, but the logo on the front panel clealy, if discretly says "DVD Video/Audio", and I'll be damned, it plays multi-channel DVD-Audio disks just fine! It also has DTS and Prologic II, as well as several custom Surround modes, none of which are common in units this cheap. So the feature set is very promising.
Hook it all up and tweak the speakers in the simple on-screen setup and start the movie/music...
Well, it's no mega-bucks theater killer, or even real competition to the cheaper BOSE systems, but the resulting sound is far from dissapointing. It won't blast you out of the room (unless your room is VERY small) but the engineers at Zenith saw fit to leave some dynamic headroom left over in the system when it's set to full volume (Smart move guys!), which means you can crank the volume all the way up to "Max" and leave it there without distortion, overheating (the amp unit does have built-in thermal and clipping protection!) or speaker destruction resulting. Smart, very smart!
The satellites in the system initially sound somewhat plastic, but they loosen up and eventualy sound much better than they do out of the box, with the biggest improvement being in the mid-range. High frequencies pretty much always sound like they are comming from a cheap mylar cone tweeter (which they are) but the vocal range smooths out and ends up sounding... well, good.(!) The sub needs to be turned down to keep it from booming, and chuffs pretty noticably at high volume, but at lower levels it sounds only mildly flabby, and approaches decent musicality.
Replace the factory speakers with something better (Like Canton Plus X's and a real powered sub) and the results are, well, worth the effort! The amplifier and audio-circuitry in this little unit is much better than I would have suspected. When used with a speaker set that cost almost 8 times the price of the entire Zenith DVT316 kit the results were reasonably dynamic, well controled, and well in-line with HT-In-A-Box systems in that ($1000) price range. Bravo!
The video quality from the progressive-scan DVD is better than average, easily beating the output of the Toshiba and older Sony player it replaced.
Menus and optional controls are easy to understand, and the AM/FM tunner even works pretty well.
I was surprised when my friend brought this little Zenith home and asked me to help him set it up, it beat all my expectations of a system costing so little, and even managed to perform BETTER when used with better speakers! The surround feature set is pretty complete, and it even has a TOSLink optical-digital input and output. It's not a true replacement for seperate components, but as a package deal, for a second room or budget buyer, I'd be hard pressed to recomend anything costing less than three times as much over the Zenith DVT316.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jawzx
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Location: Johnson, Vermont, USA
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
Giant Carnivorous Fish
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