Sony HTCT500 3.1 Speaker System with Complete Built-In A/V Receiver (Black)

by Sony

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 14.3 x 8.3 x 14.7 inches ; 4.8 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 42 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: B0028RXMS0
• Item model number: HTCT500
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,121 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
  • #95 in Electronics > Home Audio & Theater > Home Theater Systems

Product Description

Experience surround sound with fewer speakers and wires. Add in the full functionality and connections of an A/V receiver and bring excitement to movies and video games. Featuring five HD inputs, three of those HDMI connections with Active Intelligence, S-AIR multi-room audio capability, on-screen user interface, set-up, control and connectivity of the home theater has never been easier. Its flat TV centric design allows the sound bar to blend in.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

121 of 123 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent soundbar/subwoofer option., July 1, 2009

By 

Bearcat (Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sony HTCT500 3.1 Speaker System with Complete Built-In A/V Receiver (Black) (Electronics)

This is one slick little soundbar/subwoofer combination. A significant improvement over the previous offering, the CT100. The sound bar is bigger than that model and feels like it is better constructed. The subwoofer is a solid piece of work as well.

Now for the important part, sound quality. The sound quality is much better than the old model and I would say it approaches the quality of the more expensive Yamaha YSP sound bars. You will probably have to do a little tweaking with it to get it set up properly but once you do this baby will shine. Sound is strong from both the soundbar and the subwoofer. The subwoofer is where your connections are located. You can run your dvd/blu ray player and your cable box (among others) to the sub and then the sub will run an HDMI cable to the tv. You can pretty much plug anything into the back of the sub as there are three HDMI inputs, two component inputs and a composite input along with the normal cable tv coax.

One thing to keep in mind. This will not surpass the surround quality of a good quality seperate sound system with multiple speakers. But then again most buyers should know that from the start. This is an option for people who don't want speakers all over the place or who have space issues which make a soundbar solution the best option. I rated this item 5 stars in comparison to other soundbar solutions, not compared to a surround system with multiple speakers. While there are some better sounding soundbars they are at least twice as much if not more expensive. For the quality and price this is an excellent soundbar option.

60 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CT100 trumped by it bigger brother, the CT500, February 15, 2010

By 

Antonio M. Cuevas "My Sony CT-100 Settings (a... - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony HTCT500 3.1 Speaker System with Complete Built-In A/V Receiver (Black) (Electronics)

As many know, I was a big fan of the CT100. CNET loved it and so did many other reviewers, and others noticed it as well due to its extremely low price that it was the best bang for your buck you could get at the time. That's when critics and users had a mixed result on, some liked it and some didn't with varying reviews from the user/consumer base. Even though I didn't have as many issues as others, It most likely had to do with where it was located (small room), tweaking the CT100 (which I'm famous for), and what I primarily used my CT100 for (Blurays and PS3 gaming). With that in mind, people had either horrible results due to the opposite; Using the CT100 in large or very large rooms, not tweaking the CT100 at all (expecting it to sound good right out the box), and using the CT100 for cable/Satellite/broadcasted channels or DVD's only.

Well I did have problems with the CT100 as well and some are in accordance to what others were having problem with. DVD's were hurting my CT100 often as some production companies of those dvd's recorded their audio in very low volume. Due to this, with the CT100 only pushing out "250 watts", often times the CT100 still wouldn't be able to push out the volume needed to even enjoy the movie, even at max volume and Tweaks. Some dvd's were fine but some were a different story, unsurprisingly though I never had problems with Blurays as those use uncompressed audio(higher quality) which output in LPCM unlike compressed audio (lower quality) in DVD's which output in Dolby Digital or DTS.

This problem in regards to sound didn't stop at movies, games were effected as well. With me being a PS3 owner (currently), I am given the option to enjoy my games in uncompressed audio fashion but the CT100 forced my hand with the "other audio formats". Often with the CT100 outputting uncompressed audio in my games, I would either be missing my rear sound and surround effects as well. For example, playing games like Resistance 2 or Ratchet and Clank Future: ToD would often have the CT100 mute the rears and it felt like there was no surround at all, which sucked. Only switching to Dolby Digital fixed the problem but if I wanted to enjoy Dolby Digital or DTS in my games, I would have either just waited for something better to come along in regards to soundbars or got a 360 over my PS3 (plan to get a 360 soon but not at this time).

Other than those two things, I didn't really have any other beef with the CT100. I grew to love it despite its few shortcomings andd found ways to tweak it to sound good in the room I placed it in (small room). Soon though, rumors flew around that Sony was going to pop out another Soundbar, which later became known as the CT500. It pumped out "400 watts" and supposedly fixed all the issues the CT100 had complaints about (low volume, not enough settings to tweak, etc.) With a few people being the first to try, my thoughts of getting it were dwindling as it looked like Sony tried to rush out the product in the beginning of the CT500's life and caused many units came out to be defective. So despite my rough times I was having, I steered clear of the CT500 until the bugs were ironed out or until full production of the unit came to be standard (equaling less defective units). Finally, after doing my taxes, my wife gave the go ahead for me to purchase the CT500. Didn't have to ask me twice, I ordered it with next day delivery so I could try it out before V-day weekend.

Now here we are with my CT500 being delivered to my doorstep, I'd have to say the first thing that came out my mouth was... "WOW! That box is HUGE!" In all seriousness, the box was pretty big, larger than the CT100 was but pretty well built with a blue lining instead of a red (CT100). Pretty much gave all the information of what the CT500 can do, output, and specs, though I will say some consumers will be a bit confused over the 400w and 280w being displayed at the same time unless you read the fine print beside those numbers. After I sorted that out I immediately cut the box open to find small foam boxes laid out to keep the CT500 safe in its travel to me. Two small foam boxes included brackets to attach to XBR(top tier) or W (120hz) models of Sony's Bravia TV's, which is a bit of a downer as I wanted to mount the CT500 to my Bravia TV which it doesn't support or able to be attached to (yep, tried to attach it but couldn't). Wish Sony placed a universal mounting kit or just not have bothered with the brackets at all in all honesty but whatever. Last things left when it comes to accessories included with the CT500 purchase were located in a small cardboard box where manuals and additional cables lay, well get into the cables later.

What was most important in the box was obviously the CT500 soundbar and its subwoofer. Going to tell you right now that the new models look nothing like their younger siblings. The CT100 was about the length of a 32in. (or maybe bigger) screen TV with a girth of 2in. As for the subwoofer that companioned with the CT100, it was tall and pretty slender, with mesh on the right side for the speaker. The CT500 on the other hand is about the length of a 40in. (or maybe bigger) screen TV with a girth of 1in. As for the Subwoofer that came with the CT500 soundbar, it's pretty short and in a lack of better words, chubby compared to the CT100's subwoofer. Now the two subwoofer do have one thing in common and that is they both house the connections for your devices. Both have three HDMI IN's and one HDMI out along with a coaxial input, three optical ports, an RCA Audio IN (Red and White), along with Sony's proprietary DM Port. That's where the comparison stops as the CT500 has many more connections than the CT100 has. Along with what was mentioned above, you now get with the CT500 analog ports like component ports (blue, green, and red), RCA Video port (Yellow, Red and white), and AM/FM ports (what?).

It also includes an S-Air port which confuses the heck out of a ton of people as some believe this allows you to use external rear speakers. I understood it didn't as it is a soundbar after all (a soundbar by definition is suppose to eliminate the need for additional speakers to be hooked up to it as it is suppose to push the surround around the room, even rears), but alot of people just don't understand what a soundbar really is meant for or what S-Air is when it comes to Sony's Soundbars at least. Stated by the CT500's manual and website, it only uses S-Air to allow you to hear the same sound in another room with connectable S-Air components/speakers in another room (wirelessly). Hopefully that clears things up but I doubt it (rolling eyes)...

Anyway, two probing things that have changed with the CT500's Sub is its cable that connects the soundbar to it and settings display. Now with the CT100, the cord that was used to connect the soundbar to the Subwoofer was a PC-Serial cable that you could easily find/buy to extend the length of the original to give you better distance between the subwoofer and the soundbar. For some odd reasoning, Sony decided to go with a proprietary cable on the CT500 that is neither able to be extended or able to bought from any store whatsoever to add length. [Correction, CT500 manual states on page 26 that you can extend the speaker cord but seems too complicated for the novice audio user.] I was first upset about it but then my worries ceased when I saw how freakin long the cable was! I know some have mentioned that it doesn't have enough length but I have no clue where people get this notion. 8FT isn't enough? I know each person's needs are different (some need the sub woofer somewhere else instead of being next to/near the soundbar), but for me my soundbar can easily sit on top of my TV with no problem with cord length. If anything, the subwoofer of the CT500 is lighter and is easily able to be set on top of a TV stand (as it's not nearly as big as the CT100's sub) if you want the cord to be a bit "more flexible" when it comes to its length. I will also mention that the cable of the CT500 includes a cord that allows you to be able to point your remote to the Subwoofer AND soundbar. Prior CT100 owners [and current] often pointed the remote to the subwoofer when the IR port was in the soundbar itself actually, thus resulting in what some called a "lag" or unresponsive as they pointed at the subwoofer for a response. Along with this cord change, the settings display has changed as well.

Now the CT100 and the CT500 have a small display on the front of their subwoofer that display information for users to what audio is being pumped out of the soundbar and volume level. The CT100's display was also used for changing settings within the CT100 itself but this has changed with the CT500. Whenever you want to go to the CT500's settings menu, you press the GUI Menu button on the remote and instead of popping up settings on the CT500's display on the subwoofer (like the CT100), it pops the menu On-Screen on your TV. With a slight pause/black screen, it pops a Sony Bravia like menu which is a bit more intuitive and easy to use unlike the [cumbersome] CT100 subwoofer menu. The CT500 also gives you a chance to play with some settings not available on the CT100, like Treble and Bass along various other things like HDMI Video Direct (OFF outputs the video through a video processor while ON Pass-tru's the video with no video processor).

Of course you still can control your DRC, Subwoofer level, Center Level, along with various other things to accommodate to various room types and peoples tastes but my CT500 for some reason sounded great right out the box. This is a first as with my CT100, it didn't sound that good until I tweaked it a bit to make it sound better. This gave me what some called me the CT100 guru as I posted my settings and they worked well for... Read more ›

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Product, August 11, 2009

By 

Ryan M. Teague - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony HTCT500 3.1 Speaker System with Complete Built-In A/V Receiver (Black) (Electronics)

I really wish this product was around 5 years ago. I had just purchased a HDTV and found out I needed to upgrade to a receiver with HDMI and Component inputs to implement a surround sound setup. I absolutely loathe hooking up Home Theatre equipment whether it's contorting my body to get to the back of the receiver, organizing the web of wires, running of speaker wire under carpet/behind walls... Not to mention the receiver/speaker setup we when with was 5 years ago was 2-3 times more than this product and I have never been happy with it.

Fast forward to the CT 500 Soundbar. The setup was ridiculously easy, took 30 minutes tops and most of that was unhooking all of the old equipment. 3 simple HD connection to the back of the sub (easy access) and Blue Ray, Xbox 360 and Satellite were up and running. I tested movies, Rockband for the Xbox 360 and just regular Satellite TV. I was blown away by all three, couldn't believe this setup could pack such a punch.

My biggest complaint with 5.1 systems is usually the voice audio is drowned out. Not with this unit, voice in both movies and regular TV was crisp and clear. The sub was deep and rich whether it was thunder or the thump of a base drum.

Product has completely changed my viewing/playing experience for entire family.