woikr » Home Entertainment

Xbox 360 Arcade price slashed in India

Setu — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:27:44 +0000

The price of Xbox 360 Arcade console in India has been dropped form INR 16,990 to INR 14,676. This is good news for all people who were planning to buy the console.

The Xbox 360 Arcade console comes with Xbox 360 wireless controller, AV cable, arcade games disc and 256 MB memory unit (to save your game progress). This console is compatible with the upcoming Kinect (previously called Project Natal) for Xbox 360.

With this price drop, you can expect the console to be available at even cheaper price on ebay and in grey markets like Palika Bazaar.

In addition to playing games, you can use Xbox 360 to stream content from your PC to your HDTV and Home Theater system.

[via Techtree]

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DTH operators unleash HD price war in India

Setu — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:55:58 +0000

DTH operators in India had planned to start HD transmissions ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth games. However, in order to milk the FIFA fever, they launched their HD services in a hurry. As a result, the pricing and plans are not made clear to the customer. We will try our best to simplify things.

Currently, the following DTH operators are offering HD services in India:

	Price for new customers	Freebies for new customers	Price for existing customers	Freebies for existing customers	HD channels available (price)	Remarks
TataSky	INR 2599	Free installation + 2 months of HD Gold pack, Super Value English Special Pack, Lifestyle Gold Pack & ESPN Star Sports Pack	INR 2599	Free installation + 1 year of HD Gold pack	National Geographic HD and Discovery HD (INR 30 per month)	FIFA 2010 & Wimbledon available in HD.
Dish TV	INR 2990	2 months of Platinum packs & HD pack	INR 2990	2 months of Platinum pack & HD pack + INR 400 cash back under exchange of old STB in working condition	National Geographic HD, Discovery HD, Zee Cinema HD, Zee TV HD (INR 100 per month)	FIFA 2010 & Wimbledon available in HD, Installation charges INR 200 extra
Airtel dtgital TV HD	INR 2940 onwards	Check this page	Not Available	Not Available	None	FIFA 2010 & Wimbledon available in HD
Sun Direct HD	INR 2940	Free installation + 2 months subscription	Not Available	Not Available	National Geographic HD, Discovery HD, Colors HD (INR 35 pm), Sun TV HD (INR 35 pm)	FIFA 2010 finale in HD, price only valid till 12 July 2010
Big TV	INR 7490 onwards	Check this page	INR 5990	Check this page	National Geographic HD	Superior DVR STB with pause, record and rewind for live TV

As you can see, not all operators have HD content as of now. Note that Dish TV and Sun Direct have the most number of HD channels. However, other operators will also soon be offering all HD channels as, according to a certain rule by TRAI, no DTH operator is allowed to exclusively broadcast any channel.

Also keep in mind that the Hindi HD channels are probably up-scaled from their SD content. So their quality might appear slightly lower than the actual HD channels (Nat Geo HD and Discovery HD).

As the HD set top boxes have already been competitively priced (thanks to TataSky), their prices are probably not going down in the near future. However, Indian consumers are extremely price conscious when it comes to monthly subscription price, hence, stiff competition in HD subscription price is expected once there are substantial number of HD subscribers. Then again, majority of Indian consumers are also not quality conscious, so many might not care about HD when they are satisfied with SD, therefore, it might take some time to reach that “substantial” subscriber base.

It will be interesting to see how the price war shapes up. Also, most operators are yet to launch HD PVR set top boxes (already launched by Big TV) which might induce another round of pricing war.

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TataSky launches India’s cheapest HD set top box

Setu — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:44:36 +0000

Back in 2008, TataSky broke the 100 rupees subscription price barrier and sparked stiff competition in the DTH space. They have done it again by launching India’s cheapest HD set top box priced at INR 2599. The new set top box delivers HD signals at 1080i in 16:9 format with 5.1 channel Dolby digital surround sound.

Tata Sky HD will offer Star Plus HD & Star Movies HD in addition to National Geographic HD and Discovery HD. HD movies and sports channels will be added later on.

As part of launch offer, all existing Tata Sky subscribers who upgrade to Tata Sky HD will get the HD Gold Pack free for an entire year. All new Tata Sky HD subscribers would be offered the HD Gold pack free for the first two months.

The success and failure of the service will depend primarily on the subscription price of HD channels. Indian consumers are extremely price conscious. In addition to high entry cost, many consumers do not adopt DTH primarily because they feel that the subscription price is too high compared to their local cable charges.

No word yet on availability of TataSky+ HD. A bad move, according to me, as TataSky+ consumers, being the premium segment, are most likely to upgrade first.

[via India Info Line]

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Big TV launches High Definition DVR set top box in India

Setu — Thu, 06 May 2010 05:40:20 +0000

Big TV, the DTH arm of Reliance Communications on 5th May 2010 launched India’s first ever High Definition (HD) set top box equipped with Digital Video Recorder (DVR) priced at INR 7,490.

The set top box will be the first to bring recording facility to a High Definition set top box in India and is touted to compete with TataSky+ and Airtel digital TV recorder, none of which have HD capabilities yet.

Here are some of the features:

200 hours recording on a 160GB hard drive
The set top box will support recording 200 hours of content on the internal 160GB hard disk. Such high recording time is achieved by using latest MPEG4 compression codec. However, I believe the 200 hours of recording time is for standard definition (SD) content. For HD content, it will be a lot less.
Universal Remote
You will be able to use the set top box remote to control your TV and DVD player or music system. This is something that Airtel has been offering even in its entry level model of digital TV.
High Definition (HD) channels
Currently only Discovery and Nat Geo high definition channels will be available. Later on Reliance will add more HD channels including some of its own movie and entertainment channels in HD. The HD channels will give you much better picture quality with 5 times the resolution of SD, 16:9 wide aspect ratio and 5.1 channel Dolby Digital sound.
Pause & Rewind
You can also pause or rewind live TV.

There is no word on whether the set top box offers remote recording facility as offered by TataSky+ and Airtel digital TV recorder.

There are 3 offers under which you can purchase the new STB:

INR 7490
This includes GSK worth INR 2490 and activation fee of INR 5000. There is no free usage with this price and users will have to buy Big TV packs separately.
INR 7990
This includes GSK worth INR 2490 and activation fee of INR 5000 plus 3 months of Diamond pack which will also include Nat Geo HD a no additional cost.
INR 5990 for existing subscribers
This offer is only for existing subscribers of Big TV who can upgrade their STB from SH to HD at this price while continuing their current subscription pack.

The new set top box will be available from 7th May 2010 across 100 cities in India.

[via ET & Shaswat Patel]

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TataSky+ remote recording feature now available

Setu — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:57:00 +0000

The much awaited dual access remote recording feature in TataSky+ STB is now available. Using this feature, you can record TV shows to your PVR from either your GPRS/3G enabled mobile (which should also support Java applications – so no to iPhone) or from the web!

Upon logging into mytatasky.com, TataSky+ users will notice a new “Record” menu item in the top navigation:

Clicking on Record will take you to a page with List of channels arranged categorically based on the genre (click to enlarge):

Clicking on a genre will show all the channels that are available in that genre including the channels the user is not subscribed to. Maybe they will add that filter later?:

Clicking on a channel name will take you to the guide for that channel. The guide is available day wise. You can select the day using the drop down on top. The guide is same as that on your STB. This means that it will have programming details only upto the next Friday. It shows the time, title and the short info for the program (click to enlarge):

Clicking on the Record button shows “In Progress” for a few seconds and then refreshes the page to show the status as “Request sent”. In all my tests, none of the requests made it to my PVR. Moreover, there is no option to cancel a scheduled recording. So if you press a button by mistake, you can only cancel using the PVR. I think the engineers at TataSky+ developed and released this feature in a hurry to compete with Airtel’s Digital TV recorder. But they should at least have made sure that works.

Another thing that I noticed was that after scheduling a recording, when you logout and log back in, the “Request sent” status is reverted, and you can again press the “Record” button. Not only that, once you go to another day’s schedule using the drop down and come back, the “Record” button is again available. Basically if you navigate away from the page and come back, the state is not maintained. However, upon pressing the “Record” button again, it does say “Failed: Already Requested”. Still, the request didn’t make it to my PVR.

Looks like it is totally asynchronous. From what I can understand, they have a system in place where they will display the guide to users with an option to record. Once the user presses the Record button, a request goes to their backend servers which then pushes the recording schedule to the user’s PVR. They are not storing the guide under the user’s account online.

There is nothing more to do (or write) as the feature is not working. We will let you know when it does.

UPDATE: The service is working fine now.

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Full HD 3D LED TVs make their way to India

Setu — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:04:47 +0000

After introducing Full HD LED TVs in India, electronics giants LG and Samsung are introducing Full HD 3D LED TVs in the market.

While Samsung has launched the 3D TVs under series 7 and 8, LG is going to launch them under the “Infinia” brand.

LG has not yet revealed the specs of its upcoming model, however, Samsung has a neat microsite dedicated to 3D LED TV. Here are some details:

HyperReal Engine: In addition to watching 3D content, you can also watch 2D content up-converted to 3D. Apparently, Samsung has this engine which can convert 2D pictures to 3D ones.

Internet@TV: Skype, streaming audio & video, internet games and probably web surfing are all the things you can do with Samsung’s 7 & 8 series models.

USB Port: To enjoy media stored on a pen drive or a portable USB HDD.

WiFi: Samsung’s series 8 models will also have in built WiFi to connect to the internet and other devices in your home network. This means you can wirelessly stream content off you laptop or desktop to the TV.

India does not have HD transmissions yet. Majority of households in India watch TV in SD and are likely to continue that for quite some time. Although the DTH players in the Indian market are planning to start HD transmissions soon, it will still take a lot of time for people to embrace 3D technology and love it enough to bring it to their living rooms.

[via Samsung India and LG India]

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Tata Sky+ launches three new features to compete with Airtel Digital TV PVR

Setu — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:19:04 +0000

In an attempt to compete with Airtel’s Digital TV PVR with remote recording functionality, TataSky+ has launched the following three features on it premium PVR set top box:

Video-on-Demand (VoD) service
Dual access remote recording
Auto standby

Video-on-Demand (VoD) service (they are calling it TVoD – True Video-on-Demand), automatically downloads 45 hours worth of content on your set top box which you can watch anytime. So, it is basically Recorded Video-on-Demand (RVoD). The videos are divided in categories Travel, Comedy, Drama, Documentary, Food & Drink. This also means that the recording capability of your PVR will be reduced from the new 90 hours to the old 45 hours.

Dual access remote recording is a feature which will enable the users to record shows on their PVR from their mobile phone or on the web. Airtel’s latest Digital TV PVR already has the facility to record from mobile phone. This is a welcome feature as it will be much easier to schedule recording from a browser rather than the crappy guide on your TV. The Video on Demand feature is also based on this technology. They just schedule whatever videos they want to offer in VoD to be recorded on all users’ PVRs and then users can access them through a separate menu in the guide.

Auto standby feature does exactly what you think it does – it puts the PVR in standby mode after a certain time of inactivity.

All the above three features are value added services and are available free of cost to new and existing subscribers of TataSky+.

While these three features offer a touch competition to Airtel Digital TV PVR, Tata Sky+ is still behind Airtel as it does not have a HDMI port (HD broadcast ready) or a universal remote, both of which are offered by Airtel.

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Be careful when you buy a DTH connection under exchange

Setu — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 06:57:41 +0000

Sun Direct HD DTH set top box exchange offer has raised some eyebrows in the industry, Economic Times reports. According to rival DTH companies, consumers are not at the liberty to exchange their set top boxes as, apparently, they do not own them.

Remember the time when DTH set top box used to cost around 4000 rupees? That was the time when you actually bought the STB. Later on, in an effort to reduce the entry cost, DTH companies started providing the STBs on lease. They still charge close to 2000 rupees from the consumers, however, the ownership of the STB lies with the company. This is news for many of us, as we believed that we are purchase the STB.

Under Sun’s offer, consumers can give their existing STB to Sun DTH and get a discount of 2490 rupees on Sun Direct HD which otherwise costs 10,000 rupees.

DTH companies give the STB to consumers at a price that is lower than its actual cost and recover the remaining money through subscription fees by retaining the customer for a long period. If the consumer opts out of the service soon after signing on to the service and exchanges or sells the hardware, it results in a loss for the service provider – Economic Times reports.

Sun Direct COO Tony D Silva says that the scheme is targeting the old customers who bought the STBs by paying the full amount few years back. It looks like he is right as this is clearly mentioned in their advertisement (click to enlarge):

According to Umesh Rao, head of marketing at Reliance Big TV, exchange offers are for saturated markets like TVs and refrigerators. He believes that the DTH market does not need exchange offers yet.

Does this mean that the premium set top boxes with PVR or HD capabilities for which the customers pay a heavy amount are also owned by the DTH companies? Time to go and review the subscription agreement!

[via Economic Times]

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Airtel launches digital TV recorder (PVR)

Setu — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:19:23 +0000

Finally, Airtel has launched its personal video recorder (PVR) in the market under the name “digital TV recorder”. It has all the features TataSky+ has including some extra cherries such as:

Can record 100 hours of video (10 hours more than TataSky+)
Has HDMI port
Ability to record shows from your mobile phone using a Java based app over GPRS

The device is priced at 6990 INR. Existing users of Airtel digital TV can upgrade and get a cash back of 1000 INR to their account.

There is no specs page on the product’s website so we do not know what other ports this thing has. But a HDMI port means that this device should give the best picture & sound quality and should be ready ready for the HD broadcasts the DTH operators are planning to launch before Commonwealth games.

Based on the features mentioned on the site, it looks like the device is very similar to TataSky+. It has the same capacity (160GB) hard disk. I will not be surprised if Airtel is sourcing this from Humax, the manufacturer of TataSky+ boxes.

There is no mention of how many tuners this device has. It is extremely important that PVRs have at least two tuners so that you can record one channel and watch another one in parallel. TataSky+ has 2 tuners. At 6990 INR, we are going to give the device the benefit of the doubt and assume that it has two tuners.

The ability to record from your mobile phone is definitely a bonus. I have been longing for such a feature in TataSky+. Even the ability to schedule recordings from the web will be a welcome move by subscribers as it is extremely difficult to navigate through the crappy guides on the TV and schedule recordings.

Lets see how TataSky+ responds to this. A competition in this segment is very much needed to bring down the prices of these set top boxes.

[via airtel.in]

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DTH Companies planning to launch HD Set Top Boxes this year

Setu — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 06:03:53 +0000

With the 2010 Commonwealth games available for HD broadcast, the DTH companies in India (Dish TV, Reliance Big TV, Airtel Digital TV and Tata Sky) are planning to launch High Definition (HD) set top boxes (STB) this year. Sun DTH already has HD ready boxes and HD service in India.

While Dish TV and Reliance Big TV might launch these boxes as early as June, Airtel & Tata Sky have not yet decided on a launch date, but are planning to launch them ahead of the Commonwealth games.

"We will launch our (HD) service definitely before the Commonwealth Games," Bharti Airtel chief marketing officer (DTH) Sugato Banerji told reporters on the sidelines of CASBAA India Satellite Industry Forum 2010.

The Commonwealth games are being eyed as the driver to the HD revolution in India just as the Asian Games in 1982 drove the color televisions in India.

The HD boxes would cost up to 30% more than the standard set top boxes and the service would be charged at a premium over the normal DTH services.

India is expected to have 3 million HD ready TVs by next year. Currently, few channels, including Discovery, Colors and National Geographic are available in HD format in India. Around 5 – 6 more channels are expected to be added to this list.

HD content is superior in audio and video quality to traditional TV systems, offering wide angle viewing, considered particularly suitable for watching sporting events and action movies. In addition to a HD readt set top box, the customer must have a HD television set to experience the service. A home theater speaker system can be used to enjoy audio in 5.1 Dolby Digital format, but is optional as the STBs can deliver standard stereo audio as well.

[via Economic Times]

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Tata Sky planning to launch HD channels in India this year

Setu — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:47:31 +0000

With Sun Direct DTH already offering Discovery & National Geographic channels in HD quality in India, other operators are also exploring the High Definition space. Since the commonwealth games 2010 in India are planned to be transmitted in HD, Tata Sky has revealed its plan to gear up to provide HD transmissions in India ahead of the games.

"Every DTH operator today is offering almost the same channels at competitive pricing. It will be the interactive services and the additional features that would help differentiate between the operators," Tata Sky Chief Marketing Officer Vikram Mehra told PTI.

Tata Sky is placed third after Dish TV and Sun Direct out of the seven DTH operators in India.

HD ready & Full HD LCD TVs are already gaining popularity in India thanks to stiff competition among the major players like LG, Samsung & Sony.

HD transmissions offer 5 times more pixels than SD transmission. HD ready transmission at 720p or 1080i are substantially superior to their SD counterparts as they offer much better picture quality & Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

Notably, Tata Sky+, company’s premium PVR offering already has the hardware capabilities and required interfaces (ports) to handle HD content.

As the DTH market has become saturated with seven players offering almost the same stuff at the same price, it is imperative that companies will look for technical advancements in order to lure more customers. It will be interesting to see the HD revolution in India.

[via Economic Times]

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LG launches BD390 Wi-Fi Blu-ray Player

Setu — Fri, 15 May 2009 06:06:50 +0000

Wi-Fi in a Blu-ray player? Sure, why not?

LG’s $400 BD390 is first blu-ray player with integrated Wi-Fi.

Features:

BD playback
1GB built in memory
7.1 channel output
DivX and XviD playback
Netflix, YouTube & CinemaNow
Auto discovery of media on your network

The player got a thumbs up from Gizmodo with easy setup and vast format compatibility as its pros.

[via Gizmodo]

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Tata Sky+ Next Gen DTH services in India

Setu — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 11:59:54 +0000

The TATA Group in a joint venture with STAR launched the Tata Sky DTH services in India on 8th August, 2006. Taking a majority of market share from DishTV, they have more of less monopolized the market until a few days back. With the launch of Reliance’s Big TV and Airtel’s Digital TV (and all the hype created with the ad campaign wars), Tata Sky might loose a chunk of its market share to these guys.

In an effort to stay ahead in the race, the Tata’s are gonna launch the Tata Sky+ DTH service in India soon. This will be a DVR based service offering MPEG4 compression wherein the user can record, pause and rewind live TV.

How does Tata Sky+ work?

Tata Sky uplinks all channels from broadcasters to its satellite (INSAT 4A).
The satellite sends these channels in digital format to the minidish fixed outside your home.
The minidish relays the channels to the digicomp which decodes the channels and sends them to your television, giving you an unparalleled television viewing experience with DVD quality picture and CD quality sound. What’s more Tata Sky+ gives you the power to plan and control your TV viewing with features such as record live TV, play back a recorded programme and pause & rewind live TV.

How is Tata Sky+ service different from Tata Sky service?

Tata Sky+ has MPEG4 technology, and an in-built personal video recorder that enables you to record live TV, play back a recorded programme and pause & rewind live TV. These features are not available on Tata Sky service.

Tata Sky+ Features:

record your favorite programme/movie
watch one programme while you record another
set your favorite daily soap for recording only once and it will get recorded automatically everyday
pause live TV
rewind live TV
all the current Tata Sky packages will be available on Tata Sky+ as well.

Recording Functionality:

You can record up to 45 hours of live TV with Tata Sky+. At the press of a button, you have the flexibility to:

record one channel while you watch another channel
record two channels simultaneously while you watch one of the channels being recorded
record two channels simultaneously while you watch a previously recorded programme
record a TV series automatically

You can playback the recorded programme at any time convenient to you.

If you want to record all episodes of a programme back-to-back, you don’t need to set individual recordings for each episode. Just set a ‘series link’ for the programme after you set the programme for recording. This will ensure that all episodes of the programme get automatically recorded. You can now play back all the episodes at a time to convenient to you.

The hard disk capacity is 160 GB. There are 3 modes to manage the disk space – Automatic, Warning and Manual.

Price:

The price of the digicomp (hardware) is INR 8999. Installation charges INR 1000 are extra. In addition to the standard package mothly fee for the standard Tata Sky service, one has to pay a monthly charge of INR 50 for the Tata Sky+ service. However, the launch offer will include lifetime waiver of this fee.

This is very good news for Indian customers. With major players getting into a war on this front, we can expect better services and hope that some day, we will get HD broadcasts and other services similar to TiVO etc. in the US. The price might be a little high right now, but with the competition pumping up and players like Reliance and Airtel in the field, it is bound to go down.

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Samsung SyncMaster 2243 NWX – Great Monitor, Crappy Controls

Setu — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:41:46 +0000

The Samsung SyncMaster 2243 NWX is one of the popular 22” monitors in the market. It is well placed above its very worthy competitors from LG & Viewsonic. Its a great monitor for all home based purposes like watching movies, playing games and surfing the Internet.

Specifications

22” wide viewable area. (55 cm)

1680 x 1050 max resolution.

8000:1 contrast ratio

5 ms response time.

Magic Color Chip

Magic Brightness

Standard RGB connectivity (No DVI)

The package comes with a RGB cable and a table top stand. The monitor can also be mounted on the wall to save desk space.

The monitor looks great thanks to the pitch black screen. The 5 ms response time is good enough for watching movies or playing games. However, a response time of 2 ms would have added more value to the package. The max resolution is near Full HD. Watching movies off DVDs is great on this one. To watch HD videos, you need to couple this up with a powerful graphics card which can handle 30 fps at such high resolutions without tearing the frame.

The monitor can be rotated almost 360 degrees without moving or rotating the base. This is helpful if your desk is in a corner – usually the case with home PCs. However, the monitor has a large viewing angle so you won’t have to keep rotating it.

Everything looks great on this monitor. Its a different experience all together to work on a (relatively) large screen. You have so much more space where you can keep much more windows. Apps like Gmail and Google Reader will look awesome at these resolutions and the wide aspect ratio (16:10) serves as cherry on the cake.

The monitor scores well in looks section, Its the most symmetrical monitor out there. It will give your desk a trendy as well as an elegant look.

Sadly, to improve the looks, Samsung probably completely ignored usability. The controls are at the bottom right corner of the screen on the front. But they are not visible to naked eyes. Only when you put your head dead close to the screen, you will be able to spot the “touch” controls. It is almost impossible to control this thing. To make matters worse, the “Power on/off” control is right next to the ”Auto Adjust” control. So every time you try to reach out to switch it off, you end up auto adjusting it. To understand what I mean, click on the above image to enlarge it and look hard at the bottom right end of the screen. You will be able to spot the almost invisible controls.

Conclusion

All in all, even with crappy controls, this is a great monitor. At the end of the day what matters is the display quality and the looks – and it scores well in both the categories. The monitor is available for approx 12500 INR at Nehru Place. At this price, it is definitely a value for money option which also delivers great performance. Additionally, Samsung monitors are known for their maintenance free operation. And even if you need it any time, Samsung’s on site service kind of rocks.

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Review: Logitech Z – 5500 Digital 5.1 Speaker System

Setu — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:25:55 +0000

The Logitech Z – 5500 Digital is currently one of the preferred 5.1 speaker systems in the market. This THX certified speaker system is primarily aimed at gaming enthusiasts and movie buffs. I got a chance to try out this beast at one of the electronics mega store in Noida. Here is a review:

Specifications:

Drivers	Satellites: 3” polished aluminum phase plug drivers Subwoofer: 10” high-excursion ported driver with 6th order bass reflex enclosure
Hardware decoding	Dolby® Digital, DTS®, and DTS®, 96/24 soundtracks Dolby Pro Logic II (Movie and Music modes) 6 Channel Direct Stereo x2 Stereo
Supported digital formats	Dolby Digital DTS and DTS 96/24 PCM (uncompressed stereo): 44.1 kHz / 16 bit through 96 kHz / 24 bit
Source inputs	Digital optical for DVD or CD players, PlayStation®3, Xbox 360 Digital coaxial for DVD or CD players or PC sound cards (requires coaxial cable, sold separately) 6 channel direct (3 stereo-mini connectors) for 2, 4, or 6 channel PC sound cards OR 6 channel direct (3 stereo-mini connectors) for 3 stereo analog mini audio sources, like CD and DVD players, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or 2 channel PC sound cards (some devices may require stereo mini to dual RCA adapter, sold separately) Analog stereo-mini (on side panel of control center) for portable CD, MP3,or MiniDisc® players
Power	Total FTC power: 505 watts RMS Sub-woofer: 188 watts RMS (into 8 ohms, @ 100Hz, @ 10% THD) Satellites: Left/Right: 62 watts RMS x 2 (into 8 ohms, @ 1khz, @ 10% THD) Center: 69 watts RMS (into 8 ohms, @ 1kHz, @ 10% THD) Rear Left & Right: 62 watts RMS x 2 (into 8 ohms, @ 1kHz, @ 10% THD)
Frequency response	33 Hz — 20 kHz
Other	Signal to noise ratio: >93.5 dB, typical 100 Input impedance: 8,000 ohms

Package Contents:

- Logitech® Z-5500 Digital: 4 satellites, 1 center channel, 1 subwoofer
- 6-channel direct cable
- Digital SoundTouch™ control center
- Wireless remote control, batteries included
- User manual
- 2-year warranty

Sound Quality (Gaming):

This speaker system seems to be specifically designed for serious gaming. Hook it up with a PS3 or XBOX 360 and it will simply blow you away. Performance with a 5.1 PC sound card was also mind blowing.

I played a couple of racing games and the experience was leaps ahead of that on a 2.1 speaker system. You can actually hear cars overtaking you from left or right. The excitement doubles when you enter a tunnel.

Score: 5

Sound Quality (Movies):

This is another area in which this speaker system beats all others by several laps. I watched a couple of scenes from The Matrix and it felt like I was watching it in an IMAX. If only I had a 6 storey high screen .

The center speaker is far more powerful than it actually looks. This little wonder reproduces crisp and clear sound so that you do not miss even the slightest of whispers in the dialogues.

Score: 5

Sound Quality (Music):

This is probably one area where Logitech didn’t pay much attention. The speakers sound pretty good compared to the other 5.1 speaker systems in the market when it comes to music. However, the bass is a bit loose. This might not be noticeable while you watch movies as there are no continuous beats or rhythm. However, when you listen to some music numbers, you will notice little delay (microseconds) in beats due to this. Many people might not be able to notice this. However, serious audiophiles will find out immediately.

Score: 4

Ergonomics:

Table Top

Wall mount

The satellites stand serves 2 purposes. It can be used to keep them on a table top and can be swiveled to serve as a wall mount. Cool eh?

The controller’s rear panel has optical and coaxial digital audio inputs as well as three 3.5mm inputs. These 3 inputs can be configured as a group to connect a 5.1 channel PC sound card. They can also be used independently for three separate stereo sources. On the side, there is a 3.5mm headphone out and one 3.5mm aux input to connect an iPod or other portable music player. I think giving so many inputs on a small desktop remote controller will result in cable clutter and make the controller dis balanced.

The controller also has a big volume control knob, a power button and 6 buttons to use the menu system. A 2 line blue backlit LCD displays the menu system.

The wireless remote works pretty well from a distance of 20 feet (that’s as far as I could go). It has extensive buttons to adjust the sound and select different audio input sources.

The 10” sub woofer is probably one of the biggest in this category. You might be surprised by its size as it is much bigger than it looks in the images. WARNING: Do not try to move the sub woofer on your own. It might give you hernia.

Score: 4

Overall Score: 4.5

Conclusion:

The MRP of this speaker system is approx 25k INR. However, you can get it for as low as 17k at many electronics mega stores and even for less at Nehru Place. At this price, this is a great buy for people looking for an integrated Home Theater and Gaming Speaker system with good music performance.

Pros:

- Powerful yet crisp sound output
- Multiple format decoding
- Plethora of input options
- Full functional remote
- Stylish controller

Cons:

- Expensive
- Loose bass. Not good for music enthusiasts.