That's cool, but only available in white which is not happening. Also, I'm only in town until Monday which pretty much leaves local or Amazon.
The Energy Take 5.1, Def Tech ProCinema 600, and the Boston Acoustics system from a local Costco are the current options it seems...
I don't know about the Boston kit at Costco but Boston doesn't have the best track record on subwoofer amp reliability and their after sale service on the electronic pieces seems weak based on the interweb reviews of the TVee soundbar/sub setup . Check out the Best Buy reviews. Boston it seem is out of its league on powered speakers and remote controls these days.
I myself have an MCS 95 HTIB that came with a Denon AVR and the sub amp in that small 5.1 system went dead with virtually zero use. I hadn't played it in so long that I had no idea it was not working until the warranty was up. While the sub was plugged in I would be surprised if it had 10 hours of music play on it. It is easy to find this story all over the internet must have been thousands of failures on the MCS subs alone.
Again per the interweb amp failures are very common failures apparently on these and other Boston Acoustic mini systems. The Boston offered service options ranged from none to outrageously priced so basically it is a throw away. I did not bother with my sub after reading that. It was a nice sounding sub for a desktop system.. Too bad I had no service option that made sense. I ended up sticking one of the Pioneer Andrew Jones subs under the desk at $89.
I see Boston HTIB systems selling refurbished with 90 days warranties on the electronics.. that is a leap of faith for sure. Before everyone jumps up to point out that sub amps fail on many brands I am well aware of that, just not as consistently across the board as on the Boston mini systems.
I have an Infinity sub here that the amp died on as well and the service options that exist are third party but at least they exist. It is just that Boston makes good speakers... I don't understand the decision to deliver so many bad subwoofers into the market and not have cost appropriate service solution for them. Perhaps the corporate parent of Boston isn't near as invested in the Boston brand as they are in Marantz and Denon.
A lot of those folks who get burned that way are never going to move up to higher end Boston product as the subwoofer failures leave a bad taste. In my case I got the Denon/Boston bundle on clearance and I was not hurt too bad. If I had purchased the Home Theater as a stand alone or paid full price for the bundle I would feel pretty abused.
Surely the parent company has sufficient design expertise in house building amps to design some sub amps for Boson that last in these small systems. Realistically these amps should be just about indestructible and they are pretty much the opposite.
