Customer Rating:  
Summary: Good system, but has its cons...
Comment: This is a great system in the fact that it has wireless rear speakers, an iPod dock that works well, and the 5-disc player will play just about any type of DVD I've put inside of it without any problems.
I've owned this system for 9 months, and here are the issues I have with it:
My Nintendo Wii (located just below the receiver) was having trouble connecting to the wireless network, and I discovered it was due to interference with the wireless rear speaker signal. When I turned the home theater system off, the Wii would connect just fine. Annoying, although I read that you may be able to switch channels for the speaker signals to resolve this issue.
The sound quality is decent, but the wireless rear speakers are pretty weak, hardly any sound emits from them. Then I read that this system is not compatible with true 5.1 surround on anything but playing an internal DVD. Boo for that!
I recently got a PS3, and decided to also get a digital optical cable, only to find there is no port for one on this system, as others have said in these reviews. Some people have said to upgrade to the SC-PT1050, but I think Panasonic recently released the SC-PT960 model that does include a digital optical input. You might want to check that one out instead.
Overall, good system, but has its flaws. Wish I would have done more research before buying, but this was my first home theater. Live and learn I guess.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sounds great but no true 5.1 surround!
Comment: I bought a set of these from Circuit City yesterday after comparing its sound quality to every system they had in the pricerange of $300-$700 and deciding this sounded the best for the money it cost. I brought it home excited as a schoolboy to set it up. Setup is nice & easy, it takes longer to pull the components out of their packing than it does to set up the system & start enjoying the new sound, which by the way is miles above that of the television speakers on my 42" LG LCD.
I make fun of the concept of wireless rears, because you find yourself connecting wires to your wireless speakers, & thats just dumb, but to be honest...its quite nice. My living room is 21x22 feet, and it did svae me about 50 feet of running wires through my crawl space to install the surround speakers. Instead, there's just a 10 foot wire from the wireless receiver to each of the remote speakers. I'd prefer them to put a receiver in each speaker so that the wireless can actually be...hmm...wireless. :) In fairness though, this feature is pretty convenient & its something I don't want to give up if I wind up exchanging this system.
The Ipod controller is cool, the setup microphone is very cool...it automatically adjusts the levels for each speaker to give you optimal surround at the listening location you choose. The sound is full and clean, able to fill my 21x22' living room with vaulted ceilings very well. It upconverts your DVD's to the point where they look about as good as broadcast HD, not quite blueray quality, but very good. If all you're going to do with this system is watch DVD's or listen to music, then I highly recommend it...at least 4 stars. BUT, if you want more, then not so much...keep reading.
Ran into a problem thats pretty disappointing, I'm trying to decide whether or not to return it for something else right now. There is only 1 audio input, just a red & white RCA...no optical in, no hdmi in, no digital coax in, nothin. I didn't see this as a problem in the store, my TV's got like 18 million inputs on it and an audio out, so I'll just use a set of RCA's to run the TV's output to this thing & have surround sound for everything I watch. NOPE!!! Doesn't work that way. I called tech support to tell them my rear speakers won't make any noise, and found out that you can't get 5.1 from the auxiliary input on this unit. You have to have an optical or hdmi input to get the true 5.1 surround sound from anything other than your DVD's. So your HD cable is pointless, your Blueray is pointless, your video games are pointless, these speakers will ONLY give you true 5.1 surround sound on DVD's you're watching from the unit itself. BOOO!!!!
**update** I decided to get rid of this afterall. After talking with a Crutchfield advisor, I found that the next model up, the SC-PT1050, is going to do exactly what I want. THe main difference is that it has an optical input, so I can connect my cable box & PS3 to the TV with HDMI cables and then my TV to the SC-PT1050 with the optical cable & that will maintain my true 5.1 surround sound instead of the 2.1 through 6 speakers that the 950 does.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 5.1 Surround from Internal DVDs ONLY ! ! ! BEWARE ! ! !
Comment: Pros: Works great for watching only DVDs
Cons: Can NOT be connected to any other type of digital audio equipment. Extremely limited system.
I originally recommended this system for my father-in-law who was setting up his first home theater. He was finally ditching the 25yr old 27" TV and basic cable. It was on sale at Circuit City for the same price as on Amazon. After unpacking and setting up everything, I was very unhappy to discover that there are NO DIGITAL AUDIO INPUTS for this system. This means that you can not hook up your HDTV, Satellite, Blu-Ray player, or any other digital device to this system. I find that totally outrageous. The only thing that will give you theater-quality surround sound is the built-in DVD player. This is a totally useless system. Unless you are trying to use Panasonic exclusively to simplify the amount of remotes to use with your Panasonic HDTV, then I would recommend the Sony version of this system. It has plenty of digital audio inputs. If you must stick with Panasonic, then your only real option is to upgrade to the PT1050 which offers a single optical input that you can connect to your HDTV. The PT1050 worked perfectly for my father-in-law. The PT950 was a useless waste of everyone's time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great product for the $$
Comment: I have researched plasma and HTS for about 5 months, and decided on this unit.(with help from [...] reviews) I was going to order from my local Sears, but they wanted [...] more! I'm not high tech and this was pretty easy for me to set up with my plasma pz77u I bought also. The surround sound on the HTS, was great with the movie Transformers, the neighbors even called to see what all the rumble was! It's also great just watching cable. Got the best deal here, no shipping fee's. I live on the west coast, and it shipped from New Jersey, HTS arrived on the 7th day & the plasma arrived on the 8th day, in perfect shape! I am very pleased to say the least, thanks Amazon, AGAIN!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Price
Comment: This is a great system, but its cheaper at a number of other stores than it is here. especially if you go to those stores, then you dont have to pay the higher price or the shipping costs. Shop arround, save seventy bucks.
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