Customer Reviews

Panasonic SC-HT900 Home Theater System with 5-Disc DVD Changer

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Very attractive system with many features. Progressive scan DVD player looks great on my projector, thanks to the high end video circuitry in the 5 Disc DVD changer. Sound is very clear and accurately reproduced though the six speakers. Movie dialogue comes through very naturally. Does a fine job at decoding Dolby Surround. Movie "bass" effects are clear and pronounced through the active subwoofer. I've tested this system in store next to an expensive Bose and the quality is more or less comparable.

It is a known fact Panasonic DVD players are among the best in the business. Many more expensive DVD players(costing considerably more than this system) made by other brands use Panasonic internals for their players.

All DVD players must contain an MPEG decoder. In addition, progressive scan DVDs must contain a special device called a deinterlacer. Interlaced video frames are sent to a television in two pieces, by first drawing all of the odd lines, then the even ones. The deinterlacer essentially doubles each frame of video(producing a very defined picture) by filling in missing information. That is the true meaning of "progressive scan." This is the basis for HDTV, and be aware that your (Projector,TV,LCD) must be able to display HDTV or progressive to take advantage of this great feature. As with any other product, deinterlacers vary in quality and must be able to handle various film encodings. Panasonic uses top notch internal hardware to perform the deinterlacing(DCDi) and decoding. The results are spectacular!

Don't expect the bass to blow your ears out - no system at or near this pricepoint will. The subwoofer is powered but yet conservative (but more than other systems in its class). Don't buy this unit to play at maximum volume. System can be cranked up to loud but not extreme voulme. Sound will be more than enough for rooms <250 sq ft. I would say the same thing about the expensive Bose. The true measure of a system is not how it plays at maximum voulme, but rather the accuracy and clarity of the sound.

This unit also makes a great system for listening to FM Radio, CD/R etc. Unit supports many types of Discs. Music seems rich and pleasing, in some cases exceeding much more expensive units.

The speaker stands will save you the cost of buying wall mounts. This system has a plethora of features that are stated in the manual. For example, there are multiple surround modes, seating placement adjustments and digital input capability. Unfortunately the owners manual is written like an engineering course lab manual - so it may take the non- technical some time to learn all of the arcane features. Also, you should purchase at least a 16 gauge spool of speaker wire - do not use the doorbell wire that is supplied with the unit.

Overall I will give this unit 5 stars, because it is priced very well with respect to its competition (Sony Dream system 990) and it exceeds that and other products in its class in terms of quality and features. On the other hand, if you desire a very loud, extreme bass systems - don't consider a home theatre in a box. Purchase a component receiver/amp with large poweful speakers. And of course, a Panasonic progressive DVD player for the best video!

The good news: attractive product, reasonably good sound and features. Please see many of the other reviews for more detail.

The bad: I had owned the system for several months when I started experiencing 'popping' sound through the speakers. And when I say 'popping', I mean truly heart-attack causing, like a lightning strike-very disconcerting.

Being a good techie, I immediately assumed I was experiencing power surges...although my surge protector wasn't tripping.
Step Two: Check all connection. Still have the problem.
Step Three: Waste an entire Saturday completely disassembling my AV setup (dvd, tv, VCR, Satalite, XBox), check every wire and connection, completely and carefully reassemble. Same problem.
Step Four: Search internet to see if anyone else has problem.
Bingo! (Note to self: Next time search internet at Step Three, instead of wasting Saturday...)
Known problem of overheating of circuit board in subwoofer. Game over.
Neat system, but appears I now have to replace the system; from what I have read, fixing is not going to be cost effective, and no guarantees that the problem goes away.
Buyer beware; there are a lot of people who are happy with this system, but a substantial number of us have had the same issue, and I wouldn't be surprised if more folks see this happening over time.

I have just bought a Panasonic SC-HT900 to replace a rather messy collection of aging seperates. I am a major Sony fan and of course audions a few of the Sony options first but could never quite get excited about them then the Panasonic was recommended to me so I gave it a go. It beats the Sony's hands down (I am sad to say!). Now, to get this out the way, unlike many of the reviews I've read, I have so say that the Panasonic unit is pig ugly. Especially compared to some of the Sony units but then I'll live with it's rather dated and cluttered apearance for it's superb picture and sound. I dont understand how some people consider it underpowered unless they have VERY large rooms but in my 12'x20' room, the Panasonic has no trouble at all in filling the space with detail and a deep, warm, well controlled bass. I wouldn't score it highly on ease of use initially but you get use to it. The 4 floorstanding speakers are attractive and seem to do their job admirally. The inclusion of DTS was a big plus for me but I'd never compared DTS with DD5.1 before. Only 2 of my DVD have DTS but flicking between DTS and DD shows a clear difference. Add also that apart from SACD, I dont think there is a shiny disc format it wont handle.

The system was a breeze to set up and delighted me straight away. For the money, this truly is superb.

I think the build quality could be better on the main unit. It feels a little flimsy so I will be especially gentle to it.

Bottom line, despite the negative points, I am delighted that I didnt buy the Sony. It would have been a choice of fashion over function and I have a better system for choosing the Panasonic. Maybe I'll get used to the looks. Who knows. Love is blind.

And just 1 final complaint to the manufacturers about all of the systems I looked at. Why do none of them have optical out? I will have to keep my CD player just to copy stuff on to my MiniDisc walkman!

So, why 4 stars and not 5? Well, not attractive, unclear manual, feels a bit poorly built. But I'll forgive a whole lot for what it does do well. Picture and sound are just great. I was grinning for ages.

Buy now and you wont be dissapointed. Especially at the price.

Just hooked this up to my Hitachi 60" LCD/Projection TV and am very pleased. You may read reviews from "bass-heads" who are only interested in ridiculous thumping, not purity of sound, but I can tell you this system sounds fantastic. My family room is 20 X 15 and these speakers fill the room with a rich, vibrant sound rivaling that of a Bose system (costing twice as much) that I tried and returned.

The subwoofer is perfect for the system - it adds rich base without sounding like one of those "installed by a teenager" car systems you hear so much of today, and it doesn't take up the entire floor to do it. We couldn't reach full volume before the system was too loud for comfort. 12dB on the dial was enough to drown out any attempts at normal conversation. The surround sound is phenomenal (Matrix Reloaded played Progressive Scan Component Out was our baseline movie).

The manual is a bit tedious. I'm pretty technically inclined, and this was a bit of a challenge for me. The fact that the remote has a Shift-key says a lot. Plan to spend some time mastering this thing.

Bottom line: If you're looking for a chest-cavity shaking, hip hop dance club thumping system, buy discreet components. If you're looking for an attractive, affordable, incredibly clean sounding system with very high quality components, this is definitely the system for you. Easily 5 stars for this price.

I realize this is a very old product now, but you never know if some unsuspecting person is out there seeing it on auction sites from previous owners trying to unload it.

It is indeed a very attractive system for the price we all paid for it when we bought it and took it home. The surround-sound is impressive for the price, the look is stylish for something so cheap. It's not all that complex to operate either.

But the heart-attacking-inducing loud pops really are awful. Just awful. They ruin TV-watching. They ruin cocktail parties. They ruin those romantic moments. They ruin that soothing after-work music. I have owned this system now since it came out about 3 years ago, and I'll hang on to it a little longer cuz the pops seem to be ebbing just a bit lately and I travel so much for work now that I'm rarely home. But I will be going Bose next -- and recommending to all you folks out there thinking of buying this system from a previous owner --- DOOOO NOOOOT DOOOOO ITTTT!!!! PLEEEEEASE!! (Unless you're literally deaf.)

I picked up an open-box of this system at Best Buy one evening and thought I'd made a steal. Normally $500 I got it for $300 with some scuffs and damage, no big deal. I brought it home and immediately plugged it in to test it out. The sound was great on the radio but the DVD player failed to function! After much fighting and hassle I googled the error I was getting, DVD H02. I'm not suppoesd to post URLs in the review, so I'll just say to google "panasonic H02" (without quotes) for yourself and see what you find. It's not pretty. Panasonic DVD players consistently fail after 1 year of use and the repair bill is more than a new DVD player. The problem is, this unit is linked together and can't be separated for components. So if one thing goes, the entire system goes and you're out of luck. Oh, and you'll also find that the fan in the subwoofer (where the amp is) goes very quickly and will ruin the amp if you don't repair it in time.

The only really nice thing about this system are the speaker stands. They are stylish and very convenient.

In the end I returned the item the next day, got my money back, and bought a Yahama YHT-150 600 Watt 5.1 channel system without a DVD player. My current DVD player already had a coax out for surround sound, so I ditched the "complete system" idea and went for a component system instead. The Yamaha system is amazing, has _incredible_ sound, and if I want I can replace its speakers with nicer ones because the amp is not directly reliant on them.

And no matter what you decide to do, always upgrade the speaker wire. It will prevent amp over-heating and give your speakers a much better sound. I needed about 75 feet to wire all the speakers in my medium size setup. I chose to use 14 gauge wire.

First the bad news, causing me to downgrade the rating by a star: I received this system via UPS ground ship on a Thursday. After the set-up of this system with my new Sony 27FS100 TV, the main HTIB unit failed to power on. Despite troubleshooting with Panasonic techies (800-211-PANA), I reluctantly disassembled the entire home theater and e-mailed Amazon at 10PM on a Friday night. Much to my surprise, I received a reply at 11:30PM apologizing for my troubles and informing me that a replacement system was enroute via 2-day Fedex. In addition, the defective system was to be picked up at my home, at no charge. UPS picked up the system on Monday, and the replacement system arrived on Wednesday. Amazing customer service by Amazon. Lesson learned: carefully unpack and remember how a large system such as this is packed, in the event one needs to repack and return. Amazon made this unfortunate occurrence a much more pleasant experience than it could have been.

Now for the system. I bought and installed 16-gauge speaker wire for ~$13 instead of the supplied thin (18-20 gauge?) wire. The larger speaker wire will not fit inside the slots in the supplied speakers, and I widened a few of the plastic slots with a Dremel--your call if you think it worth the trouble to use heavier wire. I did not replace the speaker wire in the upper part of the speaker tower.

The only cable supplied with the HTIB system is a single video composite cable. If you have a fairly new TV, you will get best video performance by purchasing one set of component video cables for the HTIB-to-TV (spent $24 locally, but noted afterwards you can get a component cable set for ~$15 on Amazon). I also used one set (~$7) of RCA audio cables (L/R) for TV audio out to HTIB TV audio in. I also used another set ($7) of RCA audio cables for VCR audio out to HTIB VCR audio in. Finally, I used the supplied video cable between my VCR and the TV (old VCR did not have S-Video or component plugs).

Other reviewers are correct about the operator's manual (tediously written by audio engineers) and the little buttons on the remote. Take some time to walk yourself through the features. DO follow the recommendation to select 16:9 output of the HTIB during "Quick Setup," if your TV can handle the input. My Sony has selectable "enhanced 16:9."

Sound quality was excellent in my 15'X18' living room. I will have to live with the system a while to see what audio settings I prefer among the presets (Music, Movie, Panarama) and the PL II presets. There are lots of options to balance speaker outputs and adjust for "non-optimal" speaker placement (real rooms shared with spouses are not a blank sheet of paper for speaker placement!). The woofer has 4 presets--I preferred the heaviest of the settings (4). There are several different tone presets (hall, disco (?), live, clear, flat, heavy, etc.). The radio tuner is surprisingly good, with better FM reception than the Denon system I replaced. The features in the manual under DVD viewing are probably much more extensive than I will ever use--and are probably the most confusing for the rookie. Time will tell whether I will ever use them.

Despite the false start, I am pleased with Amazon's customer service, price and responsiveness. Looking forward to getting the most from this system.

I bought this Home theatre system around 2 weeks back. After lot of research I narrowed down to Panasonic and Onkyo. But due to my recent good experiences with Panasonic products I went for this one. I did not want to spend more than 500$.This one cost me around 425/- . The sound quality was very good and the speakers are very stylish. I hooked the whole system in about 2 hrs. The speaker wires that come with the system are 33 feet each for the surround sound speakers and should be good enough. I unecessarily bought the extra speaker cords and ran short of the 50 feet wire that I bought and then only did I open the speaker wires which came default, should have opened them first. The Remote takes some time to understand, but if you are savvy with electronic gadgets it should not be a problem. You can hook up the digital cable and VCR player pretty easily (For this you may have to buy the cord). I was pretty impressed with the sound quality from the digital cable I have, It sounded better than my friends BOSE 3.2.1 system. The DVD player could play my home DVD's which I burnt on a DVD+R disc although the official manual says it plays DVD -R discs.
Overall a good system for the price. I would recommend it if you are looking for a sub 500$ home theatre system.

My wife selected this system because of the speakers and stands. I must admit that it sounded great for the price, at first. Several months of use and we got the same heart attack inducing popping sounds reported in most of the reviews here. The subwoofer/amp is extremely hot and the fan has stopped working. Panasonic was less than helpful, so I pulled it apart and found that even though the fan was good, the board would not supply any voltage to it. I would highly advise to go with another brand, as I will myself will be avoiding anything marked "Panasonic" in the future.

I usually don't leave product reviews but because I feel burned so badly on this one I had to say something to warn everyone else. I was actually online searching for a way to remedy the popping and hissing, thinking I must have been doing something wrong, and then I ran across other reviews that were stating the same problem that I am having. This system really is pathetic peace of junk and I have been totally embarrassed by them on more than one occasion. They will pop and hiss (loudly) then the sound will totally disappear. Forget this system and don't give Panasonic another dime. If I were looking for a new system I would go with Bose. Yes, Bose systems are expensive but they know have payment options on their website and I can guarantee you won't get these types of reviews form their system.