Customer Reviews

Panasonic SC-HT400K Home Theater System

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I recently purchased the Panasonic SC-HT400K Home Theater System and I love it. The first DVD movie I watched was Saving Private Ryan. With the lights turned down, I thought I was in the theater.

The sound is loud and crisp. I could feel the artillery and machine gun fire during the beach landing. Way cool!

I'm gonna watch all of my DVD titles again just to see what I have been missing.

kcw
Kenneth Ward
Denver, Colorado

I am by no mean's an audiophile, so reserching different system's was a bit daunting.
However after purchasing the system, I was knocked over by the quality of sound!
After a bit of grumbling over direction's, I had the system up and running.Boy does this system deliver! Cranking the volume as far as I could without knocking picture's off the wall, the speaker's did not give a hint of distortion.
I thought the system had a seperate powered sub-woofer. It does not. It does not matter. Deep rich base is all I could ask for. 16 guage wire is a must. Buy plenty if you need to re-arrange.
It is a perfect system for medium sized room's with adjustable speaker range setting's.
If you are looking for a system without breaking the bank,this is it!

Panasonic packs a lot of value and versatility into its SC-HT400K Home Theater System. The quality and features of this system make it worth every penny of the manufacturer's suggested retail price and a genuine bargain at the discounted prices found at retailers.

Setup was reasonably straightforward, although the spacing of speaker terminals was tight even for small fingers. A built-in white noise generator made balancing the output of the speakers a snap.

Most of the half dozen sound fields that can be imposed on the output--ranging from an intimate club venue to a stadium- while more pleasingly understated than others I have heard, will, I suspect, find little use by most listeners. One of those fields, however, is very effective and clever. The "party" mode allows the listener to walk about the room without perceiving the source of sound to shift from speaker to speaker.

The sound from the speakers is unforced and transparent-at least at levels that the dogs and the neighbors will tolerate. The rear speakers do not make themselves obvious as a source of sound (except when the source material deliberately places the sound at those speakers). The general effect of the rear speakers is subtly to pull sound from the plane of the front speakers into three dimensions.

Last year the leading consumer magazine rated Panasonic's stand alone receiver, SA-HE100K, a best buy. A comparison of the SC-HT400K's receiver with the SA-HE100K receiver done on Panasonic's website shows the two receivers to be substantially the same, with the SC-HT400K lacking a few features that its brother has. (For example, the SA-HE100K is a 6.1 channel receiver; it has an output for a rear center speaker.) If the price difference between the SA-HE100K plus a set of speakers and the SC-HT400K package narrows enough, the purchaser might want to consider buying the former separates rather than the latter system.

After the foregoing kudos, why give the SC-HT400K a rating of only four stars? The subwoofer that I got with this system was defective. Fortunately, there is an authorized Panasonic repair shop within ten miles of my house and the defective part was replaced in a week at no charge under the manufacturer's warranty. Nevertheless, the defect was an inconvenience and should not have gotten past quality control.

This is a test. After I wrote my review the program performed an an illegal operation and was shut down. Before I try again to type my review, I am running this test.