For this review I expected a good small footprint sound bar for a bedroom.
I got this sound bar at work because I wanted something better than TV stereo but nothing too crazy. This sound bar has good audio quality and even has decent bass and treble settings
It looks nice with blue lit buttons and a blue lit front display that dims when not in use. The iPod drawer is automatic and you don't have to press to release like many others. It can wall mount using two hinges that you screw into the wall and attach to a rail on the back.
By now you probably know that this product has no IR code for universal remotes. You should also know that the remote it comes with isn't great either. It seems like it only works well when you are directly in front of the sound bar and not too far off to the side. Also, it would seem a higher than normal percentage of these are DOA and don't power on for very long before dying. Just be aware and have it exchanged if yours smells like burnt plastic when you turn it on.
Pros:
-good sound
-ipod charger/player
-ipod video out to TV
-looks good
-easy to wall mount
Cons:
-high rate of DOA
-no IR code
-sucky remote
Trevsource iLive 2.1 Channel Speaker Bar with Dock for iPhone and iPod (Black)
My flat screen was difficult to hear and I knew I needed speakers..but no money or space for a big set I tried the sound bar. It works great, love that I can play my ipod on it too. Its not a "speaker" system with multiple speakers but for me it improved the sound tremendously
We bought this because our Samsung LN46A550 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV has terrible sound (we knew this when we bought it). But it was worse than we thought it would be - we had to turn the tv way up to make out what people were saying. This is a big improvement. The glaring omission with this product is that there is no way to integrate this with our At&t uverse remote. I called their customer service (be prepared to reach India) and they verified this. Of course, this is a sound bar designed to be used with a television - why wouldn't you include this capability? Every other television accessory has this simple feature and has had it for years. If we used a separate remote for every accessory, we would be using 4 different remotes! Big miss on that feature.
I wish I paid more attention to the negative reviews on this before buying it. The sound is Ok for the price. The fact that it won't work with any universal remotes is a big draw back. But the worst thing about it is that it constantly randomly turns on to the FM mode with the volume very high. It does this whether it is turned off or on and regardless what source it was on. It will do it every couple of days and is VERY loud! Sometimes in the middle of the night even. I can't return it and dislike it so much that I am [probably going to go give it to charity. I think this might be the first or second product review I have ever written, I only write them if I am really happy or really disappointed with a product. DO NOT BUY!
I have a 42" Samsung plasma with very thin sound in our smallish living room, and wanted to upgrade my with an external soundbar. I looked at and tested several on the market, in the store (Vizio, etc) and browsed some on Amazon and decided after reading a few reviews to bite on this one. The 2.1 sound was what I was looking for, and Ipod drawer and built-in subwoofer were a plus for me (we have an iPod touch and an iPhone and my wife really likes listening to her iTunes music when not watching tv). We also have a Wii hooked up to the same tv, which is capable of streaming movies, and a DVD player in this room.
I tried hooking this up to our tv or DVR cable box, and in the first 10 minutes could tell it wasn't going to work easily. Just to get the thing up and running and see how good the sound was, I got to the back of the cable box and connected the AV cables to the bar, and connected power to the soundbar unit. The sound quality was not too bad, and bass was definitely more prevalent than my tv's tiny built-in speakers. However I couldn't control it using the existing the remote, only the separate included remote.
I tried connecting this directly to the TV, which would have been the ideal solution, since then I would only need one wired connection for all our devices (cable DVR, DVD, Wii) and could also use the existing remote to control the input to the sound bar. For anyone who has a Samsung, your TV probably only has one audio output . So that was a total no-go. At that point I completely gave up, it simply wasn't worth messing with or trying anymore. I could have stuck with the cable DVR input and also connected it to our DVD output, but then the sound bar would be unusable with the Wii. Not a total game breaker, but more than I wanted to deal with. I looked at the soundbar's instructions and they had a very very basic diagram of a "sample" way to hook up your devices. However this was just a general guideline and really wasn't very helpful at all. Upon my 2nd attempt the next day to get everything hooked up, it was clear this just wasn't going to happen. It would be possible to get an audio converter box to connect 4 or 5 devices to your sound bar through the second Aux hookup, but they don't even tell you this. Just have a bunch of devices connected with one "arrow" in the flow chart diagram. Yeah... OK. Without any external add-on, it's only possible to hook up a maximum of two devices - plus your iPod. I have three devices.
Also in the picture of the item, I would say the soundbar appears to be at most about 3 - 3.5" deep, which would be near the maximum ideal size for most flat screen tv's. In reality, the speaker bar was 4.5" deep, which looked really awkward with and was difficult to integrate into our existing entertainment unit. Ours is a TV on a very compact entertainment center / stand, not mounted on the wall in our apartment and I had no desire to mount either one on the wall. I had to move the tv (which is only about 2" thick) all the way back on the entertainment center and get the speaker bar arranged to the front with a minimum 4 inch gap between the base of the tv and the rear of the sound bar, unless the sound bar had to balance precariously on the TV's wide, flat base. It just looked really awkward and would benefit from having "legs" that could slide under your existing flat tv's base as I have seen on other units. After moving as close to the tv as possible, the top of the sound bar was also tall enough to block the bottom half of the bezel of my TV, not terribly bad but not what I hoped since it broke up the clean look. Finally, since I couldn't control the sound with my existing cable remote (which also controls our tv), it became even more frustrating. I have thought about setting it up in our bedroom, by using 2 separate inputs, one for the cable box and one for the DVD, but depending on return shipping, will probably end up returning the item and going another direction. - Speakers - Ilive - Sound Bar - Speaker Systems'
Detail Products
Detail Reviews
Click here for more information
