I'd like buy a value priced home theater-in-a-box ($200), not sure which provide surround sound for cable TV

Question

I was told that the all-in-one HTIB solutions with a DVD player only give you surround sound for the DVD. How can you check that they will provide surround sound for cable TV? Thanks, Jay

Answer 1

For about $250, there's one model from Onkyo (w/out DVD player) that I gave to my
brother for his birthday. He was impressed with the sound quality
you can get at this price.
Onkyo Home Theater System HT-S590S
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Onkyo-Home-Theater-System-HT-S590S/sem/rpsm/oid/148410/catOid/-12954/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-wOeSrF2WOfG/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?g=37600&I=580HTS590S
Get a separate DVD player, so it won't drag the rest of the system down with it, In case it breaks(the dvd players in those integrated HTIB systems break very easily)
I had a Sony HTIB with integrated DVD player that cost $600.
That was the worst investment i've ever made.
The DVD portion of the system just died on me. I was left with
a crappy amplifier that had been designed to fit with a DVD player into one component. The puny amplifiers use 3 ohms
to keep the watts high, but the sound suffers from serious distortion and lifelessness.

HTIB's with integated DVD players usually have some sort of "AUX" input or "Video 1"
The cheapest ones usually have 1 RCA input.

The Onkyo which I mentioned before has no DVD player, but uses standard 8 ohms, just like the A/V Receivers that you buy
separately. It has tons of inputs.
It has video1, 2 and 3, DVD, component video switching, 5.1ch input, 2 digital optical inputs, 1 digital coaxial input. For more
details, go to the crutcfield link I gave you.

I hope this helped.

Answer 2

That is a good question. At $200, options are going to be very limited. As I discovered when looking for my own system, the features, general quality, and reliability of the product may be suspect if not down-right awful. If you happen to get lucky and find a $200 display hooked up and running, you may just be able to find your answer that way. That said, I really feel that you should spend quite a bit more than $200 so you can get something that is more likely to do the job and is more reliable. In my case, I had to go the separates route,
> receiver
>DVD player
> speaker system
It was substantially more than $200, but I am glad that I ended up doing things this way. When it comes to home theater-in-a-box systems, ALWAYS leave the price option WIDE open.

Answer 3

Dude if you can fork over just like 100 more bucks you should get the Onkyo HT-S780. Freakin AMAZING! I got it almost a year ago and it works excellent. The sound is amazing. This will provide sound for your tv also in Pro-Logic IIx format which is really pretty good. The av receiver is amazing also and leaves plenty of room to upgrade your speakers down the road. My friend installs high end(10,000) home theater systems and he said he could believe how great the sound was for what I paid. The speakers that come with it are really nice. Hook it up when you get it, have a nice little break in period with some Star Wars movies and enjoy that Dolby Digital EX sound format!
http://www.onkyousa.com/model.cfm?m=HT-S780&class=Systems&p=i