I want to buy a cheap home theater system that provides a great sound quality comparable to a Bose HT?

Question

Although I want to have a great sound quality, I do not want to pay more. Expected expense to be around 300 - 400 USD. I enjoy listening to Music and love to watch movies. Any ideas on a ready made HT system or something that I can build on my own.

Answer 1

OK, first things first:

For $300-$400 do not expect the world.  Your best bet would be to look for systems that are a little more expensive and wait for a sale or for a new model to come out and the old model to get clearanced.  I've had several friends who insisted on going the home theater in a box route and wind up being disappointed with their purchase.  My strong recommendation is to look online at a site like audioadvisor.com and pick up clearanced items and build a system piece by piece.  You will come away much happier with your purchase.

BOSE and great sound quality do not go in the same sentence, unless the sentence reads "there is no way you will get great sound quality from a BOSE system."  

If you are looking for something fast, try this:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Samsung-H...

You might also want to go to cnet.com and look up home theater systems and check out the reviews.

Answer 2

The cheapest Bose set of 5.1 speakers are about $999.

You want a receiver, 5 speakers, subwoofer and DVD player with comparable sound for $400?

(sigh)

Try the Circuit City Outlet center. They have a decent looking Sony HTIB for $417.

I WONT promise the speakers sound as good as Bose with music, but this system will give you a fairly good Movie experience.  It has all the good traits of a box system:

- Separate receiver with lots of inputs for expandability

- Separate self-powered subwoofer

- 5 monitor style speakers

- Separate DVD player

The advantage of this setup is you can upgrade the speakers, the subwoofer, the DVD player, the receiver without tossing out the entire system.

The compromise: music.  

Inexpensive speakers just do NOT reproduce music well, but they work well for Home Theater.