The Panasonic SC-PT1050 Deluxe Home Theater System is an upgrade over previous models with some bells and whistles. The subwoofer is now wireless and the rear receiver is smaller but with better sound quality. It also comes with an iPod dock that works nicely for those who have an iPod and built in XM Radio tuner for the XM subscribers. If you want AM/FM radio, this unit has it too. Features are not bad for the price, but what can features do if the sound is not great. So how is the sound quality of the Panasonic SC-PT1050 Deluxe Home Theater System you ask?

For a wireless home theater system at this price range, the sound quality is pretty good. The wireless rear surround sound speakers can be better to maximize the surround sound effects but it’s good. It’s not going to sound as good as wired speakers, but you have to give a little to minimize the wires around the house. The Panasonic SC-PT1050 Deluxe Home Theater System comes with one optical input so you can get digital surround sound from your DVR receiver. Not bad for the price. It is recommended that you use Panasonic HDMI cables with this home theater system because it seems to perform at its best with these. The 5-disc dvd changer up-converts DVD movies from standard 480p to 1080i for you HDTV. The video quality looks slightly better, but there is not much difference. It could depend on the TV you have. It’s still better than 480p, but just don’t expect HD quality video (it’s not blu-ray).

The wireless speakers are actually semi-wireless in that they come with wireless receivers that do not connect to the main unit, but they are still wired to the receivers. It’s still good because there will still be no wires running around the place because you’ll put the speakers near the wireless receiver. The wireless subwoofer also needs to be connected to an outlet. One negative that comes from this however is that the receiver and subwoofer will require an outlet for power so that adds two more outlets that you need to use to get this home theater system set up. Some people have mentioned that the wireless speakers interfere with their wifi network at home and laptop connections are interrupted. This is not true across the board, but it does occur to some people. If you have a wifi network and this affects you, you can try changing the channel that your wireless router broadcasts on.

Setup is fairly simple and will take approximately half an hour to get the Panasonic SC-PT1050 Deluxe Home Theater System up and running. It comes with a microphone to automatically calibrate the surround sound speakers. You just place the microphone where you would normally sit so the speakers will know where to optimize the surround sound for. The manual could be better and more detailed, but fortunately it’s not that difficult to figure out.

The Panasonic SC-PT1050 Deluxe Home Theater System has enough features to satisfy you at this price range. The rear wireless speakers and subwoofer along with the ipod dock is a huge plus and adding these featuers is money well spent. The speakers sound pretty good although the rear wireless ones can use some more “oomph”, but they are wireless. For under $500 for a home theater system with all these bells and whistles, it’s a great deal that’s hard to beat.