JP/7/Mini
Mini compo: instant solution for home theater
Doharto J. Simatupang Contributor/Jakarta
With a mini compo set in his possession now, a friend of mine no longer feels an urge to go to the movie cinema. He prefers to spend his whole weekend at home, watching films on his DVD player, a built-in facility in his compo. He enjoys watching the films, especially because this gadget is provided with a Dolby Surround AC3 sound system and six satellite speakers with a capacity of 7,000 PMPO! For the monitor, he has a 29-inch flat- screen TV. In short, with this mini compo set he can bring the joy of watching a film in a grand cinema to a normal living room in his home.
Today's many mini compo sets are provided with external speakers such as a pair of surround-sound speakers, a center speaker and a sub-woofer. There is even a mini compo set that comes with 2 sub-woofer speakers at the same time! With its 6 satellite speakers, a mini compo set may be considered Dolby-AC3- ready. Nowadays, not only a built-in AC3 decoder but also a DTS surround and Dolby Surround Prologic II can be fitted to a premium-class mini compo set.
When a mini compo set is provided with the right number of speakers and a cinema-standard lighting system, it becomes an instant solution for those planning to own a home theater. The question is in what way is a mini compo system superior to a real home theater?
First of all, if you decide to buy a mini compo set, you can avoid the confusion and trouble that you may experience when trying to find the right brand, type and power of the receiver set and the speakers in an attempt to build a real home theater. The market offers a great variety of brands and types of receivers/speakers. Some receivers may even have a better audio quality than some AV receivers that are best for a home theater.
As for the speakers, some are of a bookshelf type (small) while others are of the floor-standing type (high). Choose a bookshelf type if you wish to enjoy (high-end) stereo music. You can use this type as the front speaker or the surround speaker in your home theater, but when you wish to use it as the front speaker, this type still needs the aid of a sub-woofer speaker. As for the floor-standing type, it really fits a home theater and can serve as the front speaker without the aid of a sub-woofer speaker. In view of this, the time needed to decide what to buy will be shorter if one opts for a mini component system.
Second is that it is much cheaper to purchase a mini compo system for your home theater rather than buying a receiver and speakers. Take a DVD compo complete with 6 satellite speakers, for example. A JVC HX-Z55D (4400 watt PMPO) costs Rp 2,840,000 while an LG LX-D5640 (120 watt RMS) is available at only Rp 1.72 million! You want other brands? There are many on the market: a Panasonic SC-VK80D (4800 watt PMPO) with 2 sub-woofer speakers costs Rp 3.52 million; the Philips FW-D596 (3300 watt PMPO) is available at Rp 2.5 million; a Pioneer EV61DVD (5600 watt PMPO) sells for Rp 3.1 million; a Sharp CD-DVD700H (4000 watt PMPO) with 2 sub-woofer speakers is sold at Rp 3.86 million; while a Sony MCH-RV999D (4800 watt PMPO) is obtainable at Rp 3.93 million.
While a mini compo system may have DVD/CD/VCD/MP3/JPEG/DivX, double cassette and full karaoke features, even a heavy-weight receiver has none of these. Other superior features that you may find in a mini compo system of a particular brand or type are the progressive scanning, a mini disc, a front Audio-Visual input terminal and a touch screen display. Another additional, but quite significant function of a mini compo system, is an audio-in (Aux-in) terminal, which can be used when you wish to reinforce the audio signal that comes not from outside the mini compo, for example from an audio source in a TV set, a play station or a keyboard. See, then, how complete the features of a mini compo set are.
The third superior edge of a mini compo set is that it does not require ample space. If you want to have a real home theater, a lot of space will be needed for six quite big speakers and more room will be required if the speakers are surround speakers, which usually have their towers.
If you use a mini compo set for your home theater, the weakness lies in the audio quality (power output) and a real home theater is far superior in this respect. Then, unlike an AV/audio receiver, a mini compo set cannot be upgraded and has fewer audio out/aux terminals than a real home theater. Besides, a great variety of surround systems such as Algorithm THX, Dolby Digital EX, DTS-ES Discrete, Dolby Surround Prologic Iix, Cinema DSP processor and so forth will be available for a real home theater.
Following the downtrend of the prices of DVD players, the prices of DVD compo sets have now become more affordable. In the premium class, a JVX MX-JD3 (2400 watt PMPO, Progressive Scan) costs only Rp 2.2 million while a JVC MX-JE3 (1800 watt PMPO) is available at Rp 2.1 million. Compare them with a Philips FW-D750 (3300 watt PMPO, Dolby Prologic II), which is sold at Rp 2.17 million or a Sony MHC-GNZ7D (2200 watt PMPO), which is available at Rp 2.5 million
For lower-end models, you can have an LG LM-D2340 (1300 watt PMPO) for Rp 1.5 million or an LG LX-D2640 (sub-woofer speakers, Dolby Prologic II, 1500 watt PMPO) at Rp 1.4 million; a Samsung MAX-DS530 (1300 watt PMPO), meanwhile, costs, Rp 1.7 million; Want lower prices? You can have a Polytron DiViDi GV-812 at Rp 970,000 or a Polytron GV-912 (1000 watt PMPO) at Rp 1.2 million! If you think these are still too much for your wallet, then you'd better stick to local TV programs!
When you choose a mini compo set, you must observe how many "ways" the front speaker has. The more features a front speaker has, the better. Usually, in a standard mini compo set, there are only two ways, namely one woofer (a source for low/bass notes) and a tweeter, which produces a treble/high notes. Today, however, many manufacturers allow three ways for the front speakers of their mini compo sets, namely one tweeter and two woofers, or, one tweeter, one mid-range (for vocals) and one woofer. In many brands, there is a built-in sub-woofer speaker in the front speaker. This built-in sub-woofer speaker allows a mini compo set to freely produce notes at low frequencies.
Now that you have seen how a mini compo set is superior to a real home theater in many ways, have you made up your mind which to buy: a mini compo set or a real home theater? Hope you make the right choice.
Glossary
1. Bookshelf speaker : a kind of speaker in the form of a small-sized box measuring between 18 inches and 24 inches high. It can be put on a table or stand on a support.
2. Dolby Digital : surround sound system format discretely based on an AC-3 compression format and can be found in DVDs, Laser Discs and Ditital TVs.
3. DTS : a surround-sound system format that is packaged for music or films. Similar to Dolby Digital but its compression technology is incompatible. The two are even competitors.
4. Floor-standing speaker: specification of a type of speaker that comes out in a box size and can be directly put on the floor without needing a special pedestal like a stand.
5. Mini Disc: a format of small-sized digital disc used as a playback medium and producing a sound equal in quality to that of a CD. The 2.5-inch disc is placed in a box-like medium.
6. Three-way speaker: system of speakers using three parts of a harmonic frequency band in an audio system plus the frequency of the output peak.
7.THX: a criterion of specification and certification designed by Lucas Films that will guarantee optimum audio-visual show reproduction in a cinema.
8.Touchscreen: the type of a video monitor screen that can be accessed by a touch to get an application going.
9.Treble: an indicator of high-frequency voice.
10.Tweeter: a component driver speaker capable of handling high-frequency ranges of between 2.000 kHz and 3.000 Hz.