Home Theatre 'Lite'

[Seeker47]

Suppose that -- for whatever reason -- you can't or don't wish to go with a full-bore home theater setup. I've recently seen a couple kits being sold at Costco, which look to be a sound bar + a satellite (wireless) subwoofer. One was from Vizio, the other I think was Panasonic. The cheaper of the two was around $250., the other one more like $400. (?) It looks like the kind of thing that would be more workable for rooms where you just can't have various speakers staggered around the place.

Just how good, how much of an improvement, how much bang for the buck do you find such kits to be ? I don't want to limit the discussion to the aforementioned two, so if you have other recommendations in this category . . . .

[redwudz]

You don't really need a wireless subwoofer as it's placement isn't really that important. Mine sit behind my front speakers. The rear speaker placement is, though, for correct surround sound. There are some systems that just use front speakers to create a pseudo surround sound. You need at minimum the two front and the center speaker. The subwoofer does add a major improvement to the low frequencies. There are also wireless rear speaker setups, though they usually still need AC power.

I don't have any experience with the units you mentioned, but others here may have used them, or similar.