Samsung HT-C6500 Blu-ray Home Theater System

Some HTiB (home theater in a box) systems are inflexible, hard to use and offer questionable performance with cheap, flimsy construction. One might even call them “cheesy.” The Samsung HT-C6500 Blu-ray/DVD Home Theater System is not one of these systems. It offers solid audio and video performance, a wealth of online streaming features, including Netflix, Pandora and VUDU, built in Blu-ray, CD and DVD playback with pretty nice upconversion, WiFi networking and ample power to drive the 5.1 channel speaker system in a decent-sized room, and all for a reasonable price. Also, unlike many HTiB systems, the unit features two HDMI inputs, so you can add on a cable or satellite set-top box and/or a gaming system with single wire audio/video simplicity.

The system includes on-board decoding of the latest surround sound codecs, including DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD so it can take full advantage of the sonic capabilities of Blu-ray Disc. It also features snappy load times, loading a DVD in about 9 seconds, a simple Blu-ray disc in 11 seconds and a BD-Java Blu-ray Disc (the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” film) in about 25 seconds. These times compete with the fastest standalone players currently on the market. The initial boot up is a little slow at 22 seconds, but the player is doing a lot of stuff at start-up, including searching DLNA devices for compatible networked media files, as well as loading the code for streaming providers such as Netflix, VUDU and Samsung’s own Internet@TV service.

During the review we did notice one disc compatibility issue (the unit can’t get past the trailers on “The Incredible Hulk” Blu-ray Disc), but this can be worked around by disabling the BD-Live feature on the player (not ideal, but hopefully Samsung will fix this in a future firmware upgrade). Also, while the audio portion of the iPod dock worked flawlessly for us, if you want to also play video or photos on your iPod or iPhone through the system, you will need to connect an additional composite video cable between the HT-C6500 and your TV or projector (a basic video cable comes in the box). And don’t look for anything fancy like album art in the iPod interface, because it just isn’t there. However, controlling iPod song access from the unit’s remote was very handy.

Speaking of the remote, this is probably the weakest link here. The navigational buttons are a little too low and transport buttons are a little too high to comfortably navigate through set-up and disc menus or to easily control playback. We were happy to see an auto-calibration system on-board (with included microphone) which can get the basics of speaker level and distance calibration accomplished without having to revert to test discs and SPL meters.

Performance tip for owners: if you feel that the bass lacks some definition or sounds a little “thumpy,” try inserting a piece of foam or cloth (or some old socks) into the subwoofer port. This will actually tame the boom without losing a significant amount of sonic heft from the mix.

Overall, we were impressed with the HT-C6500 and would recommend it to anyone in the market for a mid-range HTiB system. It’s long on features and performance but relatively short on price: a good combination.

You can read our complete review at Big Picture Big Sound (dot com).
Rating: 4 / 5

This unit would be 5 stars… if the audio and video would sync properly. But, alas, it doesn’t.

This unit has an A/V Sync control feature that lets you set a number of 0 to 300. That refers to ms delay for audio, so the larger the number, the more delay you apply to the audio. The problem is that Samsung assumes you will only have audio ahead of the video, but for me (and apparently another owner; see below), the video was ahead of the audio. So delaying the audio made the sync even worse. Even at a setting of 0 ms audio delay, the sync was still visibly off. Not horribly so, but enough to be noticeable (even to my wife who doesn’t typically notice those things). We tried to “live with it,” which lasted all of one night. After a few hours, it was beyond annoying – and we were really trying to ignore it and be immersed in the show. If Samsung let you set this number into the negatives (say, -5 or -10), that would fix everything. But until Samsung releases a firmware upgrade to solve this problem, you’re out of luck.

One suggestion we were told was to make sure to use “lip sync technology HDMI 1.3c” cables. We tried that, and it had absolutely no impact. The sync problems were still there. We happen to have two of the identical TimeWarner DVR boxes (model DCH3416), so we tried them both, going DVR’s HDMI out to the HT-C6500’s HDMI input, and HT-C6500’s HDMI out to our Sony TV’s HDMI input (KDS-50A2000). Both DVRs had identical sync problems. The sync problems also happened watching Blu-Rays (using the HT-C6500’s Internal player!), DVDs, a connected new Canon HF 20 digital video camera via HDMI and even the internet applications (YouTube, etc.). This ruled out our DVR being the culprit. Seems like any video source going through the HT-C6500 had the issue.

I was considering bringing the unit back and exchanging it for a new one (in case it was a lemon), but I found another person online who had identical problems. He brought his back, exchanged it for a second unit, and had the exact same problems. If you google search for, “HT-C6500 lip sync” you’ll find his post on cnet forums. This product is so new that there really isn’t enough people out there to see how widespread an issue this is, but the fact that my unit produced the problem and another person experienced the same issues with 2 other units tells me there is likely something wrong with the HT-C6500 itself (as opposed to it be isolated to something on my end).

It’s really too bad, because outside of the sync issues, this product was really the best of the competition, especially sound quality (meaning Blu-Ray HTIBs with HDMI inputs). We tried the LG LHB535 and LG LHB335, and both had “popping” sounds in the speakers doing anything (DVR play, rewind, fast forward, changing channels, changing inputs) as well as a horrible tea-pot-esk “whistling” sound in the speakers (even with volume down and muted).

An audio expert friend of the family told me that Samsung is notorious for not releasing firmware fixes for existing products, and instead, simply fixing the issues with the release of a new product – which, of course, doesn’t help us current owners. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t fix this for such a new product, but I returned mine.

Other Products We Tried

We bought (and returned) the new LG LHB335 and LG LHB535, which had poor sound, popping and whistling sounds and HDMI problems. We also bought (and returned) the Sony HT-CT150 soundbar/sub HTIB. It has 3 HDMI inputs (no Blu-Ray, no streaming, no real surround) and had poor sound quality on par with the LGs. We also bought (and returned) the new YHT-S400 soundbar/sub HTIB. It sounded on par (or slightly better) than the Sony HT-CT150, but was expensive for what it was.

Conclusion

At the moment, all the HTIBs (1) in this price range, (2) with internal Blu-Ray and (3) with HDMI inputs have unacceptable issues (to us, at least)… assuming you use the HTIB as the “hub” for all our incoming sources. I recommend you get a decent HDMI receiver and grab the $135 Panasonic BD65 (Blu-Ray with streaming).
Rating: 1 / 5

The system comes as advertsed. Easy to connect and install but does not access media files on pc as advertised. There was a need to install software on PC to be able to access files, but even with doing so (with very limited information on manual and on Samsung website mind you) still did not work.

I am a fan of Samsung products, but you wouuld think that they would be able to get better on their support.

The system has good sound, deep and rich, not like a BOSE system, but still very good sound at a much better price.

One other item: when powering off the system, the Any-Net service is too smart for its own good and reverts back to the TV input. The problem is I am a set op box on input and there is no way to default to this input. Minor inconvience, but still yo uthink they would have accomodated for it.

Rating: 4 / 5