Mini compo: instant solution for home theater

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.