Polk Audio SurroundBar360° DVD Home Theater System (Black)

by Polk Audio

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 44.5 x 4.1 x 7.8 inches ; 8 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 35 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply.
• ASIN: B001EHZPSA
• Item model number: AM3655-A
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,703 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
  • #97 in Electronics > Home Audio & Theater > Home Theater Systems

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

From the Manufacturer

Polk Audio SurroundBar 360: Surround Sound Doesn't Get Easier Than This

What You Know: Surround sound would be extremely cool when you watch movies and HDTV on your new flat panel TV.
What You Think You Know: Surround sound requires lots of expensive equipment, and clutters up a room with speakers, subwoofer boxes, and stuff that's impossible to hook up; it just isn't worth the hassle.
What You Should Know: The Polk Audio SurroundBar 360° DVD system gives you dramatic surround sound from just a single speaker and DVD controller. Absolutely no clutter and zero hook-up hassles.

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Two simple connections are all that's required for rich, 360-degree surround sound

Experience Room-Filling Surround Sound Without Filling Your Room

So, you gave in and got the flat panel TV for the living room. You even "let" your Significant Other talk you into splurging for the bigger screen. But now, when you watch movies together, you're both fidgety and impatient; it's not as exciting as you thought it would be. It's not the movie you're watching--it's the 2-dimensional experience of watching it when you know that the DVD or HDTV broadcast has surround sound. It's in there; you're just not hearing it. But do you really want to mess up your living room with, what, six speakers all over the place, with wires running under the carpet and along the walls? Nope.

Happy Together

Here's the solution that will make everyone happy: A sleek, easy to connect, single speaker. It complements your TV like a stylish design element, doesn't clutter up your room at all, and produces dramatic surround sound--the kind that will surprise your whole family.

That's really all you need to know. The Polk Audio SurroundBar360° DVD makes watching TV and movies fun again, with no bad technology aftertaste.

Just Plug It In

The SurroundBar360° DVD Theater is a complete digital home theater audio system. It works in any room, no imitations (unlike other "single speaker systems" that rely on wall reflections or special placement rules). It comes with a compact high-end digital processor that includes a DVD/CD player with integrated Farouja HDMI 1080i upscaler. This is one of the industry's best-rated signal upconverters, and it insures that virtually any video source will reveal its highest high-def glory on your screen. A Universal Remote is included to end remote clutter (while we're ending speaker and wire clutter, why not?). The single, sleek speaker—the SurroundBar360° itself— easily mounts above or below your TV or on your TV stand with included hardware. And all the professional settings have already been made for you. All you do is plug it in.

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Impressive Technology, Sure--But You Won't Be Tested On It

SDA technology means full surround sound from just one speaker

An elegant, single speaker bar discreetly delivers full-range sound --no separate subwoofer needed

Now that you know what you need to know (that the Polk Audio SurroundBar360° DVD gives you digital surround sound with no clutter and no hook-up hassles), you can let yourself relax and maybe even know a little more, some background stuff: the how and why. Knowing this will help reinforce what you just learned. And it will impress your friends. Seriously.

In the early 1980s, when dinosaurs walked the Earth, Polk Audio invented and patented a sound technology that allowed a single pair of loudspeakers to simulate surround sound (which wasn't invented yet) from a stereo signal. They did it with intricate mathematical algorithms and special connections (and some magic pixie dust). Extra Credit Fact: It was called "Stereo Dimensional Array," and it tricked your ears into hearing sound all around you. It was pretty incredible to hear sound coming from everywhere when the speakers were right in front of you--but the limitation of this wondrous technology was size. These were big speakers. Big speakers fell out of fashion. You don't want them in your living room anymore.

Using this groundbreaking technology as a jumping-off point, Polk Audio has incorporated new primary research into the science of how we hear sounds from all around us and delivered a digital update: SDA Surround technology in a compact single-speaker package that flat-out looks amazing when it's next to your flat panel TV. No more big speakers--or even many small ones. The SurroundBar360° DVD allows you to experience surround sound without anything else. Just this one, stylish, sleek thing. You won't even notice it after a while. But you will love watching movies and HDTV in rich surround sound.

If your family wants a superior DVD home theater system, one that provides a virtually seamless and immersive soundstage with lots of surprising deep bass, and you also want a system that's easy to set up and use without cluttering up your room with lots of speaker boxes and wires, then the SurroundBar360° DVD Theater is the solution made for you and your whole family.

The SurroundBar 360° DVD Theater adds a new dimension to movies, music, TV. Its simple connection means you can connect it to any video game, satellite/cable TV box, MP3 player or other external source and experience ear-opening surround sound with just one beautiful, stylish speaker. Rediscover your favorite video games, or play DVDs, CDs, MP3 and JPEG and Kodak® photo discs.

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Technical Specifications

Speaker Bar

Driver Complement: 8 x 2.5" full-range cones

Magnet Structure: Neodymium

Bass Technology: PowerPort with Feed Forward

Speaker Dimensions (W x H x D): 44.5" x 4.25" x 4.75"

Speaker Weight: 12 lbs

DVD Console

Playback: DVD, DVD-R, CD, CD-R, MP3, JPG

Video Processor: Faroudja HDMI with 1080i upscaling

Dimensions (L x H x D): 16.5" x 11.5" x 3.25"

DVD Console Weight: 15 lbs

Product Description

Polk Audio SurroundBar 360-degree DVD Theater is a complete home entertainment system. It incorporates the enveloping sonic benefits of our SurroundBar SDA technology and our patented PowerPort bass venting technology with the convenience of a control console that is a DVD/CD player, amplifier, and an AM/FM radio. The SurroundBar 360-degree has sleek, contemporary design and simple, single-cable speaker hookup which makes it ideal for anyone who wants big, rich surround sound home entertainment without any of the hookup hassles of multiple speakers and wires. The SurroundBar 360-degree DVD Theater employs 8 drivers. A patented combination of signal processing and acoustical geometry produces the vivid three dimensional surround field that exists on the original recording. What you hear is essentially the same as if sounds were actually coming from all around and behind you.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

199 of 208 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good but not great, November 14, 2008

By 

Pricepal "pricepal" (my own little world) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Polk Audio SurroundBar360° DVD Home Theater System (Black) (Electronics)

Observations
Pros: Built like a tank
Simple setup
Cool factor of 10

Cons:
Should have blue ray at this price point.
Frankly I think it needs a subwoofer, Tried it for a few days with a Polk subwoofer and without. Yes it sounds decent without a sub, but only decent, not great. I have yet to hear anything even close to 5.1 or any type of surround. Upon contacting Polk, I was advised that this bar was NOT (unlike the soundbar series) designed to be used above the tv only below with the optimal placement directly in the front of the tv. Frankly the soundbar sitting in front of a 56 inch tv looks horrible, under it it looks built in. Polk indicating that could affect the sound field. Well thats just cute, the whole POINT of this system was it was supposed to give you the 5.1 effect regardless of placement or your position in the room!

It is a nice system, could use a tad more volume, not amazing with the surround, even though the wide open setup I heard at best buy was nothing short of amazing, but in my 12 X 12 living room, far less than spectacular.

Finally save your money, at this price point the 360 is not ready for prime time. If you are looking for solid tight sound in a high end soundbar this is it. If you are expecting the results Polk claims you will be badly disappointed.

My old 5.1 theater in a box $300.00 system sounded a tad better frankly.

UPDATE:

After owning this a few months I must say it is a complete waste of money.

There simply is no separation in the soundfield regardless of the input signal.

I have tweaked this system to no end with lackluster results.

For a grand there is a endless amount of equipment that you could purchase that would put this system to shame.

Polk missed on this one, if your heart is set on one, wait a while as the price is certain to go down due to the LARGE amount of people disappointed in this system.

This is nothing more than a fancy expensive 2.1 system. Save your money.

87 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a bad solution, but...., October 23, 2008

By 

G. Garai - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Polk Audio SurroundBar360° DVD Home Theater System (Black) (Electronics)

The biggest issue I have with this unit that while it advertises HDMI connectivity it really doesn't have it. If you have a basic setup like me (1080p tv, set top box and a blu-ray player), you can only connect them by degrading picture quality or - as I have - use the optical audio tv output to connect to the dvd player's optical audio input and forego all other functionality of the dvd player. Not very impressive, given that owning a ps3 or a blu-ray player and therefore wanting to use full hdmi connectivity is not exactly the highest level of sophistication in late 2008.

Sound is not 360 degree (as much as we'd all want it to be), but it's a great replacement for the tv speakers. The system looks good, fits nicely in front of the tv and causes little clutter.

UPDATE: June 2011

After less than 3 years in service the Surroundbar decided to throw in the towel - it is now impossible to finish a dvd. During the first hour or so, the sound is fine (so no connectivity issues as far as I can tell), then increasing noise to the point of not being able to understand conversation. Turning the unit off, waiting, then turning back on will give 10 minutes of reasonable sound. Rinse and repeat up to 5 times to finish an average length feature.

Not impressed, not impressed at all. As an another reviewer correctly observed, Polk dropped the ball on this one.

73 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As good as 5.1 Surround Sound Reproduction gets..., September 2, 2008

By 

RFG (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Polk Audio SurroundBar360° DVD Home Theater System (Black) (Electronics)

This is a copy/paste of my review i posted over at CNET...

Pros:
- best surround sound reproduction i have heard to date
- no subwoofer needed, bass sounds true!
- easy to set up, easy to configure, easy to use
- excellent price compared to other high end virtual surround sound systems

Cons:
- could use a few more notches of volume
- lack of equalizer and presets (no fine tuning of sound)
- no HDMI inputs for audio or video passthrough

I had previously owned a Philips Soundbar and always seemed to want more from it - better 5.1 surround sound reproduction, more inputs, and better sound quality. I looked at the Yamaha's but the price and its lack of compatibility with my apartment layout (works best with square room, solid walls on all sides) kept me away. Along came the Polk SurroundBAR 360. It did everything my Philips Soundbar did, but better.

The sound from the system is fantastic. You obviously are not going to be tricked into thinking you have a set of rear speakers, but the processor in this system got the reproduction right. There is a near perfect balance of the various simulated speakers (center, front right and left, rear right and left and subwoofer). Other "soundbar" systems I have tested had problems with voice and center channel sounds, almost always being hollow and full of reverb and echo. Standard PCM or Stereo sources also provide a full, rich sound spectrum - something the Philips lacked. Another amazing thing about this system is the lack of a subwoofer. For an average sized apartment like mine, plenty of full bass is output through the single speaker unit. For those wanting to add a subwoofer, there is an input.

As well as the system reproduced sounds from all types of encodings (Dolby Digital, DTS, PCM) I still wish I had the ability to tweak a little more. Maybe this system is playing all of the audio tracks as the producers have intended it, but it's always in my nature to tweak.

The system is extremely easy to setup. The video quality from the DVD player is very good (not the best I have watched). The remote is simple (although I have a Harmony Universal Remote).

Hopefully CNET can throw up a full review sometime soon. In the meantime, check the manufacturer's website for the full specs of this unit and explanations of the technology behind it. As somewhat of an video and audiophile who is limited by his living arrangements on what he can setup in a hometheater, I highly recommend this system.