Customer Reviews

Rocketifsh Universal Wireless Rear Speaker Kit RF-WHTIB

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Just hooked this up a week ago for our RCA 5.1 Home Theater 5-DVD Entertainment System in a 500 square foot living room and it works fine! In fact it works better than I expected!

The hook up was really simple. I'm not sure what qualifies as "cheap wiring" in light of what the other reviewer says, but the kit came with sufficient wiring and the wiring connectors in the kit are universal so you can add your own expensive wiring (like we did) or simply use the ones on your existing home theater system.

Although the hook up was simple, it took us a few minutes after the kit was hooked up to realize that the rear surround speakers
ONLY work when the source on your home theater system is playing surround sound music or movies. When one of the FM stations was on and playing we didn't get any sound from the rear speaker (only a slight hiss-but nothing distracting).
However, when we put the X-Men 3 DVD in and pressed play the living room came alive with rich Surround Sound.

This is how we came to understand not all sources will give you Surround Sound on the Rocketfish wireless kit. It has nothing to do with the performance of the RocketFish kit which would be the thing you would obviously blame first.

Also Note: Like most home theater systems our RCA home theater system has a changeable preset for "Stereo" , "Subwoofer" and "Surround" along with the Equalizer settings. "Stereo" was our defaulted setting so we had to change it to Surround Mode to get the full effect of the kit. Because of this the Rear Surround speakers when hooked up thru the Rocketfish Kit ONLY works well when our RCA system is set specifically in Surround Mode and the Stereo Mode is turned off. This would explain why many reviewers give this bad reviews on the basis that the units are non functioning when they first hook it up.

This is not in the Rocketfish manual but for the kit to work correctly you need to have
1) A source that gives surround sound (DVD, FM station, TV show, CD, etc...) on home theater system
2) You need to switch your home theater system settings from Stereo to Surround mode or completely turn off Stereo Mode.
3) You also need to have a 5.1 home theater system that is capable of 5.1 Surround Sound Mode.

When all these conditions are met, the Rocketfish Wireless kit works well. And if your source is not playing surround sound you can easily turn off the surround speakers at the rear by turning off the Rocketfish kit or switching your Home Theater System's settings back to Stereo. Easy!

We did NOT have any interference between the RocketrFish kit and our in-home Internet 802.11 a/b.g WiFi set up. Which is sometimes a main problem of these Surround Wireless kits.




Pros:
Easy Set Up, Rich Sound, Looks Cool, Low Profile, No WIRES across living room floor! Works best for 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound Movies and Music DVDs and TV Shows.

Cons:
Manuals should give more information concerning compatibility of 5.1 Surround Sound. FM and CD Source Music playback on the Surround Sound is not as rich as Movie/Music DVDs and TV Shows. But I guess that is what Stereo Mode is for. Stereo Mode = CD and FM playback and Surround Mode = Movie/Music DVDs and TV shows. Simple.

The Bottom Line:
If you like to get the Movie Theater effect of Movies and Music DVDs in your living room, minus the wires then this kit is for you!

I purchased this kit with the intent to use it not in a surround sound system but to pipe music to two speakers in another room, so that I can play music in multiple rooms. I set it up so that the Rocketfish sender is connected to my Audio-Video receiver unit's output for front stereo speakers (while the front stereo speakers are also connected to the same output). The Rocketfish receiver was setup in the other room and I hooked it up to two other speakers. And it works great! I can play music through my audio-video receiver and listen to it while I'm in either room.

My audio-video receiver can also be used to play surround sound but like I said I'm not using the Rocketfish kit for playing surround sound in the same room, but to play stereo sound in different rooms. I don't doubt that if I wanted to set this up for surround sound, it will work just as well - in which case the audio source will then have to be playing in surround sound mode (just like another reviewer here mentioned).

We recently moved into a new townhouse and I wanted a 5.1 home theater set-up. I didn't want to run wires to the rear speakers so I started looking into wireless speakers (Panasonic and Sony). I wasn't too happy with the reviews on these wireless HTIB's, so I was excited to stumble upon the Rocketfish Wireless Kit. Knowing this product was available, I was able to look at much higher quality speakers.

I ended up buying Orb Audio speakers and am happy to say Rocketfish works exactly as advertised. I have cordless phones and wireless internet in the same room, and never have any interference problems. My source is a PS3/Blu-ray player, and the wireless Orbs sound fantastic with Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio pumping through them. I can hear a slight hum when the speakers are off, but only when I place my ear directly on the speaker. Overall I am very happy with this product and the price makes for a good value as well.

I was skeptical about a device at this price point delivering high quality wireless sound, but I wanted to exhaust all options before cutting holes in drywall and running wire, so I gave the Rocketfish a try. The setup is super easy, connect the transmitter to your rear surround speakers using +/- speaker wire, then connect the small receiver to your main A/V Receiver using the provided speaker wire. I fired it up and surfed some satellite channels I know broadcast in surround... Wow! The rear sound was clear and crisp, this is a keeper for me. I did not observe the slight hiss mentioned in some other reviews. The rear transmitter has a volume dial, I currently have it at 50%. Great product that saved me a messy project of running wires in the walls

I first saw this unit at my brothers house where he used it conventionally to hook up his rear surround speakers. He didn't want to run wires across the room, or have to drill through beams or joists in the basement to run new wires. His Rocketfish receiver is hidden under his couch and it works great.

We then started thinking about some alternative uses. My audio/visual setup shelving cabinet ran out of room for my old school reel-to-reel, cassette player and equalizer (purchased overseas in 1978 while I was in the Navy). I disconnected and put them in a corner intending to sell them on Ebay or Craigslist. I just didn't have the heart to sell them because there were too many memories from the 70's and 80's when I used them a lot. So, I hooked the old components up to the tiny Rocketfish transmitter and sent the signal to the Rocketfish's receiver, which I connected to my A/V receiver's CD input. It worked like a dream.

Then I got to thinking that I could do the same thing for my laptop, which is on my bar across the room and is hooked up to a couple of external hard drives and a Zune MP3 player (among other things). All I had to do then was buy another Rocketfish unit and then I spliced one end of a typical 3.5 mm cord and connected it to the Rocketfish transmitter. The other end of the cord connects to the laptop's headphone out source. Now everything I play through my laptop can be wirelessly transmitted to my A/V system (which runs 10 speakers). I had a couple of computer speakers and subwoofer hooked up originally to the laptop and wanted to still use them, so all I did was buy a $5.00 2-way splitter at Radio Shack for the 3.5 mm headphone jack out of my laptop. Now I can play anything from my laptop running through 13 speakers in my man cave. I have the flexibility of using all of the speakers if I choose, or just the 3 computer speakers, or none at all. It was the perfect solution for my wireless needs.

I have the spare Rocketfish receiver unit tucked away in case the one in use goes bad for any reason. I only need the one receiver hooked up to my A/V system because it reads the signal from both of the transmitters I'm using from different corners of the room. It only picks up one signal at a time, so all I have to do to switch the signal that it picks up is hit the connect button on the back of the Rocketfish receiver. By doing this, it can toggle back and forth between signals. But usually I just have the old tape players signal turned off. I don't use it very often. It's more of a conversation piece than anything else. But they work!

Audio/Visual enthusiasts might laugh at my usage. They might say that all I needed was to get a media center, etc. But instead of big bucks and taking up more space in my cabinet, I've done it almost invisibly (the Rocketfish's transmitters are very small and the Rocketfish's receiver is also a fraction of the size of most components).

Tim Taylor of "Home Improvement" would be proud. "Augh, Augh!"

I bought this item from Best Buy. There are two boxes one is the transmitter which connects to the Amp and the other is the receiver which connects to the rear speakers. I connected them backwards and it did indeed shut off my amp, because the rear box is an amplifier and when it is connected to the amp that is a bad situation. Once I realized I had it backwards, I switched the boxes and everything worked great. I'm glad my amp has some kind of circuit protection or else I would have fried it. I believe all the low ratings are due to the same problem. Read the directions!

For everyone who has been having trouble getting this to work, make sure you read the manual. When we first setup the system, it did not work. After a few hours of trying different wire configurations, I came back and read the reviews here. When we setup the system, we reversed the receiver and transmitter. The small unit gets hooked to your receiver/tuner and the larger unit with the volume control gets hooked to your back speakers. Hope this saves some fustration for others. :)

The product is a quality item. I bought it two years ago as an open box item at BB. 500 sqft family room. Wi-fi in the house connected to wii 360, ps3, Samsung LCD and pc, cordless phones, works great and is easy to set up and u just plug it into your speaker output of your amp.

Specific con to my set up and amp: I have my receiving box hidden behind my couch and connected to my Onkyo amp with "2 -zone" capability as "rear speakers" in a 5.1 set up. When I switch my amp to zone 2 to play audio in a different zone in my house the unit shuts off if not reconnected afte some time. To cut it back on I need to move the couch a bit to hit the switch, so a remote power/control switch would be useful as the volume controls are also in the receiving unit which you will probably hide away hence the whole point of wireless surround.

Overall a quality product I can hear some hiss, at times which can be controlled by not turning the receiving volume to MAX. I would buy again and recommend it.

I live in a townhouse, where threading wires for rear surround speakers is difficult, so I've been looking for a wireless rear speaker solution for years.

Sony made one several years ago, and I bought one. The transmitter was a bank of six or eight infrared LEDs, which transmitted line-of-sight to the receiver and amplifier. It worked fine -- for a week or so -- then died. When it was running, the infrared LEDs made the transmitter too hot to touch, and the heat no doubt killed it.

I waited a few years for a radio-based solution, and I was pleased when Best Buy came out with their Rocketfish wireless speaker system. I bought it and installed it. It also worked fine -- for a week or so -- then one channel or the other, or sometimes both, would go silent. Unplugging and replugging the transmitter's power cord sometimes got it to work again, but not all the time. Intermittent operation is often caused by heat build-up, so I took apart the transmitter, bent a couple of large resistors away from the circuit board, and drilled some holes in the case for extra cooling. No difference -- the left and right channels dropped out intermittently.

So I started Googling for a better solution, or a least a more reliable one. And I found one -- the Amphony Model 1550. It costs more than the Rocketfish, but it's worth it if you need a wireless speaker set-up. It has a transmitter and two separate receiver/amplifiers -- the Rocketfish has only one receiver for both channels, so you might still have to string speaker wires across the back of your listening room from the Rocketfish receiver to your speakers. The Amphony receivers can be located near or behind their speakers. Each Amphony receiver/amp does require its own power plug-in, of course.

The Amphony system has been working for a few weeks now, and I'm confident that it's solid. It operates in the 5.8 GHz band, but there's no interference at all with my 5.8 GHz Airport wi-fi network. There is occasionally some interference in the form of crackling noise from the speakers when my 5.8 GHz cordless phone, or my cell phone, is being used. To me, that's an uncommon and minor annoyance. If it gets worse, there are cordless phones that operate in other bands.

It looks like the Amphony 1550 will be the wireless speaker solution I have long been waiting for.

I ordered this unit to go with a Onkyo HTIB, and even though the time to receive was not what I expected, the product works great. Easy to setup, no problems with reception between the receiver and transmitter. Was able to have this unit up and running in 10 minutes.

Update:
After leaving initial feedback for the seller, they contacted me via email and asked me to revise my rating. I did go in an revise the rating, but they sent e another email asking what happened to my revision. In the email they also had a veiled threat of legal action if I did not revise my rating.

From their email:
"What happened to your promise to remove your feedback? Your feedback is very damaging to our reputation and has affected our sales.

In general, Michael, your feedback is denigrating the US Postal Service, and has nothing to do with our services, but it is severely damaging our overall rating with Amazon. This is a very serious matter, and we respectfully to remove it ASAP.

I know you don't want to be legally responsible for our losses, Do you??????

You may have received other orders from other sellers sooner, but did you compared where your orders were shipped from?

PLEASE REMOVE YOUR NEGATIVE FEEDBACK . . .

David W., Customer Service Manager"

Personally, I find this behavior unacceptable and unethical. Each person is allowed to leave feedback and it is a personal opinion, for the other readers to take with a grain of salt.