Polk Audio SurroundBar360°
Product Description
Polk Audio SurroundBar 360-degree DVD Theater is a complete home entertainment system. It incorporates the enveloping sonic benefits of our SurroundBar SDA technology and our patented PowerPort bass venting technology with the convenience of a control console that is a DVD/CD player, amplifier, and an AM/FM radio. The SurroundBar 360-degree has sleek, contemporary design and simple, single-cable speaker hookup which makes it ideal for anyone who wants big, rich surround sound home entertainment without any of the hookup hassles of multiple speakers and wires. The SurroundBar 360-degree DVD Theater employs 8 drivers. A patented combination of signal processing and acoustical geometry produces the vivid three dimensional surround field that exists on the original recording. What you hear is essentially the same as if sounds were actually coming from all around and behind you.
Features:
- Polk Audio patented SDA Surround technology delivers a full 5.1 Home Theater sound from a single, 44 1/2-inch cabinet
- 1080i HDMI with high definition video up-conversion from any video input
- PowerPort Bass Venting System for superior clean, low distortion bass that you can really feel; no external subwoofer required.
- Single 15-feet cable for the absolute easiest hookup; no more tangled wires to string around a room
- Remote control for complete control of all sources at your fingertips
Price At Amazon.com: Too low to display
Average User Rating: 4.5
No of Reviews: 18
Click Below To Buy at Amazon.com
Polk Audio SurroundBar360°
M. Elmalky
22 Dec, 2009
I’ve been shopping around for a good sound quality sound system for a while. Of course, the Bose system is the best no doubt. For $2000, it better be. But I wasn’t ready to pay that much. I’ve heard and tested endless system, and the search came to an end after I heard this PolkAudio 360 SurroundBar. I was practically blown away from the sound quality. I think it’s the best quality after the bose system for less than half the price.
I have a PlayStation 3 and the game that i have been playing for months is a brand new experience now with this sound system.
It can get very very loud. I can barely keep the volume at 30. Anymore would drive my neighbors crazy. No movie or video game has yet tapped into the potential of this speaker system. Nothing can make it start scratching. What really amazed me, is that even though it doesn’t have a subwoofer, it does not need one. I was feeling the base sitting on the couch across the room. Amazing. But you do have an option of plugging one in anyway.
Also, I am using Optical Audio source cable to plug it in my TV. That’s the best connection possible for a sound system It makes a big difference than regular AV cables.
I highly recommend it.
However, when i bought it, the DVD console would not power up!!!!! I had to take it back to Best Buy and replace it with another one. So beware of that.
User Rating: 5 / 5
Norman W. Semmler
22 Dec, 2009
The Polk 360 Surround bar produces a fantastic sound in my living room. It is a very complete sound system when you consider the included receiver/dvd player.
User Rating: 5 / 5
Mikey V
22 Dec, 2009
I just finished using my Polk SurroundBar 360 for the first time, and all I can say is… WOW.
Alright, I guess I’ll say a few other things too. Here are my pros and cons:
Pros:
-Great enveloping sound
-Easy to setup
-The SurroundBar looks classy
-No walls needed to bounce the sound
Cons:
-No HDMI inputs
-Not a bluray player
Even with the cons I mentioned, if your situation is like mine, this system deserves 5 stars.
First of all, I want to make it clear that this is not true 5.1 surround sound. So those of you who are used to rear speakers, this system does not mimic the sound of gunfire coming from the back corner of the room. BUT… somehow it does make you feel like you’re right in the action. I don’t have the ability to install in wall speakers, and my wife wouldn’t let me run wires in our living room, so I turned to the SurroundBar hoping for the best. It works well even if your room is not a perfect square. In my living room, I don’t have a wall to the left of my tv for about 20 ft. The wall to the right of my tv is about 6ft. THE SOUND IS NOT WEAKER FROM THE LEFT! It really is an enveloping sound that doesn’t have to bounce off walls.
In regards to not having a bluray player built-in, this wasn’t a problem for me because I already have a PS3. But the lack of HDMI inputs does throw a wrench in most HD theater situations. You can’t use the surroundbar 360 as a receiver to run your hd signals through. But pretty much all blueray players, upconverting dvd players, and cable boxes have have either optical or digital coax outs for sound. You can run your HDMI cords to your tv and the audio out to the surroundbar 360. You even get one optical cable in the box. Others can be purchase for under $5.00 a piece on amazon.
For the price I paid ($399.99 one of amazon’s deals of the day), I couldn’t be happier.
User Rating: 5 / 5
Robert A. Gould
22 Dec, 2009
No, you won’t confuse your listening experience of the SoundBar360 with an actual decent quality 5.1 surround sound system. But for what it is, the SoundBar360 is quite good – really. Most notable to me are: on the positive…very impressive low-end response in both volume and accuracy, and on the negative…no HDMI input. The result of the latter means that with my set-up, audio is fed (via optical cable) directly to the SoundBar360 from my DirecTV DVR, but my DirecTV HDMI video output must go straight to the TV bypassing the SoundBar360 – again, it has no HDMI input. Yes, it can accept component video, s-video, and even composite video, but this *is* the 21st century. Dollars to doughnuts Polk Audio’s next version will have the HDMI input. Anyway, clumsy set-up aside, the sound quality more than makes up for that – so…bottom line, I’m happy and satisfied with my purchase. After all, the sound quality is what we’re really going for here, yes? Recommended for most typical home applications.
Oops…almost forgot to mention the DVD player…no substantial complaints; high quality picture; again, I’m satisfied.
******************************* UPDATE 12/15/09
Today is Dec 15th and the Soundbar360 crapped out today…right out of the blue…it died while in use. Fuse is good, everything else appears in order, but the LED display does not come on, but there is an odd clicking sound at one-second intervals when powered on. I wrote to Polk Audio’s tech support/customer service today via their email portal. The following is the note I sent:
“This past Thanksgiving I ordered the Soundbar360 from Amazon.com. After only these few weeks of service, the Soundbar simply stopped working. One minute we were watching TV with the Soundbar channeling the audio, and then… poof… it died. I checked and rechecked everything including the fuse in the rear of the unit. The fuse appears to be good. I unplugged and re-plugged the power…still nothing… except for a slight clicking sound coming through the speaker in one-second intervals. Additionally, there is no LED display when the power is on. Furthermore, there were no unusual conditions whatsoever in which the unit was exposed. Help please.” I’ll provide further updates as the situation progresses.
User Rating: 5 / 5
JL
22 Dec, 2009
Having read all the positive reviews here, I bought this system and was surprised by how vague and narrow the sound was (and was perplexed by the previous reviews). I suggest that you start by trying a DVD with rich Dolby sound (Lord of the Rings, Polar Express, in my case), and ask if you can hear a sound that comes from the left field or from the right. I couldn’t. The system is simply not able to create stereo effects if you sit 6 ft away. Only when you leave the sofa and press your face close to the speaker, at 1 ft, can you distinguish the sounds coming from the left and the right. At this close range, it sounds as if the whole array of eight speakers was used as 4 left speakers and 4 right speakers. There is no option for the customer to dial up or down the left-center-right phase delay. This is something I thought it would do, and it’s the whole idea of a soundbar. The technology must exist to adjust the phase differential so that at 6 ft distance you can perceive stereo. But I have no evidence that it’s implemented here. When the front panel shows that it is processing Dolby signal from the DVD, you merely hear a center speaker with better-than-TV base, but it is not as crisp or as wide-angled as a 2.1 system, let alone 4.1 or 5.1. You can tell the change between a sharp point-source center (when the actor is talking) and a diffuse center (from the battle field, for instance), but all came from the front, not wider than the soundbar itself. When needed, the system would create a more diffused sound, and passes the vagueness, the sourcelessness as multi-source. But it’s not the real thing. In a nutshell, my advice is to try it in a store or test it right out of the box (save the box!), see if you have the sensation of hearing different sources.
User Rating: 2 / 5