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Most musical genres sounded better than we anticipated, given Bluetooth’s heavily compressed signal, though acoustic jazz still suffered from audible distortions in cymbals. Although the Sound Edit menu gives you access to the subwoofer level and the soundbar’s left/right balance, there are no treble and bass tone controls. Luckily the X810’s highs and mids are powerful and clear enough that we didn’t mind the lack of granular control.
This section has a flat stand on the bottom, thus the unit can be placed on top of flat surfaces. The sub is a side-firing unit, with the rest of the sides sporting the smooth gloss finish. This system comes packed up in a long box; it takes two to lug it around.
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These worked fine, though overall the time taken to switch inputs, load and read DVDs etc. is a tad longer than normal. Finally, I plugged in a Sony Ericsson phone via Bluetooth, which surprisingly got detected very fast and easily. Samsung takes a minimalist approach to home theater with their sleek HT-X810T. Its built-in slot-loading DVD player makes this sound bar system a perfect add-on for flat-panel TVs installed where space is limited. An HDMI cable connects the sound bar to your TV, and allows the player to upconvert your DVDs up to 1080p to better match the resolution of your HDTV.
The Samsung HT-X810 was one of the coolest soundbars announced at CES 2008, mostly because of the 5.8GHz wireless subwoofer. At nearly $700, it isn’t an entry-level product, but it’s a lean, mean home theater system that can eliminate a lot of the clutter of more traditional setups. We connected our Samsung P2 portable media player to the soundbar’s USB port, but the soundbar only reads content from devices that support USB Mass Storage, so it was a no-go. Our Sony Walkman NWZ-S718F, however, worked fine, and we used the low-budget-looking menus displayed on our TV to navigate the player. The sound quality of the USB input was indistinguishable from that of the soundbar’s built-in CD player. From MP3 players to cell phones to PCs, the HT-X810 is all about seamless connections.
Samsung HT-X810 2.1 Channel Home Theater System
For $700, we’d at least like component cables or better yet, an HDMI cable. Now for video, I put in the DVE test disc, and ran the usual battery of calibration. The HT-X810 is actually quite nice in the video output domain; we had upscaled it to 1080p. The entire greyscale came through well, with good separation and accuracy on different levels of grey, even at full white and full black. Color representation also was impressively neutral with no edge distortion and smooth motion. There was absolutely no stutter in framerate, which is found in low end DVD players.
The Audio up scaling, Pbass and Virtual surround features are all not too effective in making a positive difference. The latter does give a wider soundstage to the sound though. However, this simplicity means it's also hard to get a good sound out of the unit. There's no calibration routine and finding the subwoofer volume control requires browsing the manual (it's a small button at the bottom of the remote labelled Sound Edit). And while this is good for action movies it's not good if you want to listen to music, due to the sub's "one-note" response. Also, the remote only lets you change the sub volume +/- 6dB.
Home Theater Setup
That said, we’d like to see future iterations have a more polished TV-screen menu, a larger on-board display, and faster switching for inputs and audio settings. The 2008 NBA playoffs in HD were a joy to hear through the X810, especially once we turned on the Smart Volume, V-Sound, and P-Bass features. The announcers’ voices were clear even through the intense crowd noise, which was partly handled by the powerful subwoofer.
In keeping with the curvy looks of Samsung's past ranges, the HT-X810's main module has a rounded bottom bezel, sides and speaker grille. It's quite a wide unit at one metre across, and is designed to complement 42-inch screens. It's also wall-mountable with the ports at the rear angled so cables won't break off. In general, we favored the unit’s P-Bass setting over the Audio Upscale, which sounded a bit thin despite being intended to interpolate missing info in compressed music. The V-Sound setting worked well for most music and movies, giving the impression of a wider sound stage.
Product Key Features
Designed to bring customers a clear, clean sound, the Samsung HT-X810R is ideal for any individual looking for a quality user-friendly sound system. This 2.1 channel home theater system can be used with their TVs, music players, or other devices. The sound system measures 99.8 x 16.3 x 19 cm, sporting a sound bar style. This simple Samsung home theater system allows for easy set up and features a variety of connection options including Bluetooth, USB, and HDMI.
On unpacking we found the two main components of the system - the soundbar and a separate powered subwoofer. As usual fingerprints will be galore on the surfaces, though Samsung has included a nice soft cloth to do the needful, along with a few cables . One of the keys to a successful home-theatre-in-a-box is simplicity, and Samsung may have just delivered this with its new HT-X810 sound bar system. Basically, if you can plug in a power cable you can set up this system. This is because almost everything about the Samsung is wireless — from the subwoofer to its support for Bluetooth devices.
We’ve carefully chosen the components of this kit to ensure a crystal-clear listening experience. It’s available for a nominal rental fee, and includes a $25 Crutchfield merchandise credit. SpeakerCompare tailors your listening experience to the exact headphones you have, so that what you hear is comparable to auditioning speakers side-by-side in person. Knowing which model headphones you’re using lets us remove any sonic coloring from your experience. She wrote copy for both the web and catalog, covering a variety of home A/V products that included speakers, camcorders, and Blu-ray players. She also wrote a number articles and blog posts for the Crutchfield Know Zone.
The USB Host Play makes for a quick, direct connection to other mobile devices, including flash drives and digital camcorders, bringing full multimedia compatibility into the living room. It features a slot-loading DVD player with Full HD 1080p playback on standard DVDs and a HDMI-CEC output allows the user to control both the TV and home theater with one remote. It also accommodates a multitude of playback options, including DVD-Audio, CDs, DivX, JPEG, MP3 and WMA files. The body of the bar is convexly arched, with quite a thick part in the centre.
They only have the ability to "serve" a page from our site and put items in your cart. You’re in control at all times, and you can disconnect at any time by closing your browser window. Shop your favorite products and we’ll find the best deal with a single click. The Samsung HT-X810 is a great looking system — it's easy to set-up and works quite well. However, it's not quite the perfect blend of "performance and style" that Samsung promises. We were mostly impressed with the performance and ease of use of the Samsung system.
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