Soon to Come: the Onkyo HT-S5100 Home Theater In-a-box System

Onkyo has announced three new home theater systems for the discerning multimedia lover, packing a lot of great features and boasting the acclaimed Onkyo quality mark, yet retailing for killer recommended prices, suitable for any budget. The Onkyo HT-S5100 and its smaller siblings, the HT-S4100 and HT-S3100 come with impeccable craftsmanship and highly-engineered design, ready to play your preferred content right out of the box. Despite of the fact that these new home theater systems have an entry-lever character, the new Onkyo HT-S5100, 4100 and 3100 rigs are most likely to eclipse the competition: far from being cheap wannabe replicas of truly high-class gear, these HT systems have nothing in common with what you'd expect from crappy technology.

While the 5100 boasts a very serious 7.1 channel receiver and can handle the most complex audio formats such as DTS, Dolby Digital EX/Pro Logic IIx or HDMI-compliant packages, the other two run in 5.1 channel surround mode, perfect for a great sonic experience with both music and movies, but for the less-demanding listener/watcher.

The S5100 sports advanced technologies like the Audyssey 2EQ Room Calibration w/mic and has a 3-input 1080p HDMI pass-through stage; at the same time, it comes with a supplied iPod dock, meant to expand your connectivity options even further.

The AVR at the heart of the Onkyo HT-S5100 comes with a wall-crumbling 130W per channel power, aided by the blasting 290W subwoofer and summing up for a dementing 1200W of no-nonsense audio, sworn to make the competition blush in shyness and wrecking havoc through the same price range equipment. S4100 and S3100 boast 750 and 700W, respectively, more than enough to get the party going.

Other notable things about the new Onkyo HTIBs are the omnipresent speaker A/+B feature, for dual zone listening and the fact that unlike most of the competition's gear, the cabinets of these cool home theater systems are loaded with proper tweeters, making sure you get the right sound form your media.







The top model comes with a DVD player and Sirius satellite radio-ready components, while the other two versions lack these features. Nevertheless, if we consider the $579 SRP of the Onkyo HT-S5100 and the lesser prices for the S4100 and S3100, the awesome bargain comes in full; just see to your funds and watch out: these beauties are to start shipping quite soon!

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