Panasonic SC-PT650 5.1 Channel Home Theater System with DVD Player

This was a great buy. This unit is the lowest priced up to date panasonic system you can get. I Save $100.00 by getting it on e-bay. The sound is great and the system was very easy to set up and use. The only con is the rear speakers are not wireless. Other than that, the system is great. Not much diff from the higher priced panasonic other than the wireles system. This lower price system allows you to connect vista with your ipod and the higher ones dont. This is a great buy if you can get a new one off of e-bay for under $200.

Five disc is AWESOME. Great Sound. Love the iPod Dock, works with all iPod's, PLUS iPhone(just with the iPod feature) Setup was very easy. Just an all around GREAT product.

The Panasonic SC-PT650 Home Theater surround system adds and extra dimension to HDTV. We use it along with a new 50" Panasonic plasma and the improvement in sound quality is amazing.

The Viera link, which makes coordination with another Panasonic device easier to control works well; however, the use of both OEM remotes is still need for some functions. We have a large room (15x15) with 10 foot ceilings and it has enough power to fill the room; however, if anyone wants over-the-top ear-splitting volume, this Panasonic may not be enough. All speakers are wired and the bare wire just plugs into the back; the color coded wire is on the thin side and would have to be spliced to go to a heavier gauge.

The DVD player is a 5-disk changer and creates good quality; it seems better than the one it replaced. Perhaps the upscaling on the Panasonic SC-PT650 is the reason.

With all that said, there are a few things one might wish to consider. The Panasonic SC-PT650 has the standard connections such as HDMI and other video inputs. The audio input is missing the newest connection, which is a optical digital cable; this is a so called toslink cable. If your TV has the standard red and white audio OUTPUT jacks, then you do not need to pay any attention to what is said next because it should be ready to go.

If your new Panasonic only has a optical digital audio output, this means although the Panasonic SC-PT650 Home Theater system plays a DVD and the sound is impressive, it will not allow the run the sound though it for a cable TV show without a digital to analog converter. We bought a converter from Monoprice on-line for about $30 with shipping; it does a good job. The sound comes through all speakers well. However, it takes a high dollar Gefen converter to preserve the Dolby 5.1 surround. There are two Gefen converters; one is like ours for about 2x the price and the other is at least 3x the price.

This system is now inexpensive (used) and one consider buying a Blu-Ray system instead which would a Panasonic SC-B..., these are suppose to play DVD's and Blu-Ray in higher resolution. I am not convinced it is worth spending 2x as much, especially as prices are likely to decrease. Overall, the Panasonic SC-PT650 Home Theater is a good value.