Found a
Polk sound bar with wireless woofer on craigslist for $100.
My parents had a Philips sound bar that died a month or so after the warranty ran out, so I figure this'll make a pretty decent father's day gift for dad.
Edit: I've got my mobile phone plugged into it right now, giving it a test drive.
Pros:
* It's not fried. That automatically makes it better than the Philips.
* The bar itself has an IR learning function, which is neat. Rather than making the remote control learn to understand the speaker bar, I can make the speaker bar learn to understand their DirecTV remote. Cool. That should make it parent-friendly.
* For a self-powered speaker bar it has decent power -- 50Wx2 for the bar, 80W for the woofer RMS.
* The woofer is wireless. It didn't need to be, but it is. I'm looking forward to trying the subwoofer crawl with it. It'll probably end up going in the corner directly behind the TV anyway, but it's nice to know that I
could move it to a more responsive spot if I needed to.
Cons:
* The speaker bar sounds a little like someone's singing to me through a Solo cup. Plastic enclosure? Mids crossed over too high? All of the above? I think my Quarts have me spoiled. At least it's better than TV speakers, in any case.
* Inputs are optical and 3.5mm only -- no HDMI, coax or RCA. I'll have to stuff a bunch of random wires in a bag and take them to make sure I'm able to connect it to their TV.
Well, hopefully it'll be less likely to let the magic smoke out than the Philips. That's my primary goal. I think once I get it in their house and get the woofer corner loaded, it ought to sound worth $100 at least.
