Lowest Price Sony HTCT100 Sound Bar with Sub-Woofer - Black

I recently moved to an apartment and needed all new equipment, but I didn't want to have to run speaker wire all over the apartment for a true surround system, and I also didn't want to spend a lot of money for something I might replace if I ever get a house again. I started looking at soundbars, not really expecting much from them. I found that most soundbars take a single audio input from your tv, but this is a real limitation since most tv's do not pass surround sound to the audio output; I really wanted the Samsung soundbar to match my tv, but the single input is just too limiting. The Sony CT100 is the only soundbar in this price range that has discrete hdmi inputs for all of your sources (3), plus it has an optical input from your tv for OTA broadcasts or equipment that must attach to your tv anyway (like a PS2 or Wii, see below). The CT100 has several sound processing modes, but I usually just leave it set to Movie mode. The sound level is not room shattering (but I don't want that in an apartment anyway) but it is plenty loud enough for the space that I have it in; those with very large spaces or open ceilings might want to look elsewhere, such as the Sony CT500). The bass is also not floor thumping, but again that has no place in an apartment anyway. Overall this product surpassed my expectations, and is a vast improvement over the built-in tv speakers. While not true surround, it does add a lot of depth to Dolby Digital or DTS sources, far better than a soundbar with only a single input from the tv (since those soundbars won't normally be receiving DD or DTS but merely 2ch stereo except for OTA broadcasts).

The one limitation of this unit IMHO is that you can't feed video via hdmi and audio via optical at the same time; plugging in an hdmi source disables all of the other inputs for that same source. The only video inputs on this unit are hdmi, so you can't hook a Nintendo Wii to this system for example; of course you can always hook non-hdmi sources directly to your tv, but then you probably won't get surround sound to the soundbar. For those who have all hdmi 1.3 sources (video and audio together) this is a good solution; for others you might need to look at the CT500, which I think has a much more complete set of inputs. Get more detail about Sony HTCT100 Sound Bar with Sub-Woofer - Black.