It's okay, but nothing special.

I recently purchased this system when it's price was sub $300 and I'm glad I didn't pay any more for it.
The system kicks out a MAJOR PUNCH in the sound department, with deep bass that will rumble the room thanks to it's HUGE subwoofer. It's as big as a PC tower case and blasts!
Sadly, you have to have it blast if you want to hear anything. There are few controls for the sound levels and trying to listen as low volumes was worse audio quality than listening to the TV with it's built in speakers.
The system is either too quiet to hear anything but voices, or too loud to hear anything other than boom.
Also, when in stereo mode, the back speakers shut off. There is one option that will do stereo with them on (Matrix Mode) but it tries to separate sounds and ends up with the speakers just making some noises sometimes and is a bit disconcerting.
The upconverting DVD player looks pretty poor on a high def television. There also is no difference with upscale from 480p to 1080i, it's just as blocky.  more

Not bad for the price

I bought this system to replace an older Samsung HTIB that was well past it's time. As I started moving to digital components, it only made sense to start using them.

The setup is quite simple and I'm glad that Samsung decided to use true speaker wire rather than their proprietary connections. The sound is great, DVD's and FM are clear (even when using HDMI) and I'm glad I bought this unit. My only complaints:

1. I wish the rear speakers were similar to the front speakers. The fronts, you have an option as to whether or not you want to set them up on the tower stands. The rears, you have no choice.

2. There is only one optical in and I have 3 optical components that I'd like to plug in. Even the older HTIB had 2 optical connections. I can understand not having so many S-Video, RCA cables, etc.... but as things move to digital, it doesn't really give you a lot of options in having other components connect to the theater.

3. There is an HDMI-out and an HDMI-in right next to  more

Very Disappointing

When the system was 1st set up, a hissing sound was observed in the front 2 speakers, even after all connections were double checked. Front and back speaker wires were switched and the hissing moved to the back speakers. Several DVD's, that played OK in other players, resulted in very poor picture and sound quality, i.e. picture and sound kept breaking up. This continued to occur even after the DVD's were cleaned. In addition, when the audio from the TV was connected to home theater system only static was heard through the surround sound speakers. After contacting Samsung directly with these problems they concluded the unit was faulty and said they would send a shipping label to return just the amp/dvd player for repair. When I did not receive the return label after waiting a week, I re-contacted them and found out that nothing had been initiated. Frustrated at this point, I decided to return the complete unit to Amazon and will look for a different brand Home Theater unit. This is  more