Samsung HT-DB 120

Author's product rating:   

Picture Playback
Sound Level
Ease of Use
Range of Features
Value for Money

Advantages:	Great quality of sound and picture
Disadvantages:	Only enough power for a small room

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The Samsung HT-DB120 is one lovely home cinema system. I myself brought it for my bedroom and it provides more than enough for my medium sized room. When opening the box you get all that you expect: 1 DVD player main central unit, 1 sub woofer, 5 speakers, a scart lead, 1 phono lead, an AM and FM aerial and instructions.

Sound Quality: The system was rated at 150 watts, which for a bedroom or small lounge is perfect. If, however, this is for a larger room I would recommend picking up a more expensive system. The system will play Dolby Digital Pro Logic 2, dts and mp3 sound. So it has all you need to have a great experience from a DVD. The surround sound aspect of the player is great but the rear speakers could really do with a bit more power. The sub woofer may be lacking for some people but for a bedroom it is more than adequate.

Picture Quality: To be honest I cannot fault the picture quality. I myself have the system hooked up to a 21” TV and I love coming into my room with some toffee popcorn and watching the latest DVD release. I couldn’t ask for more from the Samsung player.

The main unit has the ability to be hooked up to a TV so that you can experience other things than DVD’s through your speakers. As television currently only has 2 channel output you will not get surround sound effects. (2-channel basically means only 2 different sounds sources can be producing sound at the same time, while DVDs are normally 5-channel and therefore have the ability to produce sounds all around you).

The scart lead that comes with this player is awful; you may want to get a more expensive gold lead. The other thing to mention is that the speakers and system look average in terms of their furnishings. The remote control does all you would expect.

The instructions with the player are very simple and I had it all setup in and positioned in about 30 minutes. There are a variety of different ways to play CDs and DVDs such as cinema mode. I try to keep things simple and have left the player to play with its default settings, but the option for customisation seems to be there!

Some of you may be interested to know that the player will play both MP3 discs and DVD-R’s. I have yet to test it with other DVD formats such as DVD+R. The player has no mention as to whether it will play picture CDs.

So overall I would highly recommend this for a small room, but if you have anything bigger you may find the power of this system to be lacking.

--- Mini Update 27th Dec ---

I missed out a few things. Firstly this also has AM and FM radio. It also plays DTS and Dolby Digital (2 different ways of producing surround sound).

Included in the box is the main unit, speakers, sub-woofer, scart lead, 2-phono to 2-phono lead, Instructions, FM aerial and AM aerial.

***Extra Specs***

* The RMS is 250W.
* The frequency responce is 20Hz-22KHz
* According to Samsung's website it also plays picture cds

Full specs at:
http://product.samsung.com/cgi-bin/nabc/product/b2c_product_detail.jsp?eUser=&prod_id=HTDB120TH%2fXAA&selTab=Specifications

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Connections other than the speakers found on the back:
- Scart
(The main connector to your TV)

- Video Out

- Optical Digital In
(This is used so that other devices can use the surround sound if you have any)

- Audio In (Red and White)
(By using this connection you can get "normal" tv such as BBC 1 to use the systems speakers)

- FM and AM aerial sockets.

I have now had this setup for coming up to a year and have had no problems with it what so ever, a good £150 spent in Jan 2004.