Sound bar or Home Theater

Question

I have a new Sharp 60" 1080 LED TV, very nice TV very Happy with it, but like most TV's the sound could be improved.  I have my HD cable box, Sony PS3 and Xbox 360 hooked up to it.  Playstation primarily for Blue-ray, 360 for gaming.  I thought about picking up a sound bar for the TV to improve the sound.  When you look at spending at least $350 for a less expensive sound bar, for a small increase I could get a home theater in a box and elimnate the VERY noisy fan on the PS3 for movies.  I am open to opinions with reasons... what am I missing on my thought process?

Answer 1

Hello,
It all depends on what you want to do. It also depends on your room. If you are going to have a surround sound system, you will need to think about where your rear speakers are going to be placed and if you are going to buy one of the HTIBS(home theater in a box systems), will you buy one that has rear speakers that can be connected to a wireless module? If you do not want to run wires across your room, then you will want to look at Samsung, LG or Sony as the brands that offer systems with a wireless rear speaker option. Also keep in mind that these units have built in blu-ray players and all of their speakers are proprietary, so if anything was to go wrong with any part of the unit, you would not be able to easily replace that part without having to either ship the whole system or replace the entire system. HTIBS offer quick and affordable home theater solutions, but they typically do not last as long as separate component setups, which would be a real home theater receiver and a set of  separate speakers. They have limited performance, but that is a separate issue altogether. Also, a real receiver will allow you to connect all of your devices and get true 5.1 surround sound out of them if you have the speakers connected to the receiver. If you buy an HTIB you will be limited with your connection options since most of them do not have more than 2  audio in connections and it seems you have 3 devices that you would like to get surround sound from(PS3, Xbox, cable box). But if you buy one with a built in blu ray player, you could theoretically unhook the ps3 since you indicated that it is primarily for blu ray watching anyway. That would leave you with the 360 which you could hook up through an HDMI In on the unit and your cable box which you could connect via digital optical cable. This would allow for you to have the connections you need, but if you ever want to add anything later on, this would be your peak.
By having a device connected to your TV and then connecting your TV to the surround sound unit, you are automatically going to downmix the material to a stereo(2.0) sound instead of a 5.1 sound and you will not be getting true surround sound through all of the speakers in the HTIB. In order to get true 5.1, the devices must be directly connected to your surround sound unit or receiver.
On the other side, having a soundbar will eliminate the issue of downmixing, since the soundbar is only two speakers and a subwoofer in most cases anyway, you will not have to worry about the downmixing process. 
So to sum it up, if you want true surround sound and have the room for extra speakers and possibly speaker wire, I'd say go for the HTIB and see how you like it, especially if you can get one that has wireless rear speakers. As long as you understand the limited connectivity and you also understand that a separate component system with a real AV receiver will give you superior performance and options, I'd say you are educated enough to make a decision. 
Also, head into your local best buy and listen to some of the HTIBS they have on display. You can even bring your own CD of demo material to see how the speakers sound to your ears. To a lot of folks, they offer enough performance for the money they are willing to spend. For some, they don't quite do it. It's all subjective and it's all up to you, because at the end of the day, your ears are the only ones that matter when making a purchase for your use.