Home Theater Kit Review Format 2.1Harman Kardon HS 250

The Harman Kardon HS 250 is a complete 2.1. It is equipped with everything you need for playing back movies, you just need to connect a suitable TV or video projector. The complete set includes a DVD player integrated in one unit with AV controller and tuner, a pair of speakers and a subwoofer.

Traditional multi-channel home theater systems, for which receivers such as the Harman Kardon AVR 355 described above are designed, offer their users uncompromising sound quality that allows all the nuances of a multi-channel movie soundtrack to be conveyed. At the same time such systems are quite bulky, they require special wiring of acoustic cables to rear channels and can not fit in every interior. In cases when the installation of “adult” multichannel system for some reason is not possible, or you already have one large multichannel system for example, in the living room or a specially equipped cinema hall , but at the same time, you want to watch movies with multichannel sound in another room eg, children or bedroom , you should consider buying a small home theater with two speakers – such as Harman Kardon HS 250.

Carefully acquainted with the structure of this set, our readers can ask a quite natural question. If you only have two speakers, where does surround sound come from, there’s no center or rear channel. Will the buyer of this system have to be limited to the usual stereo sound? In fact, this system reproduces surround sound, but it does so not in the usual way, feeding the signal to the rear speakers, physically located behind the listening position, but by imitating their sound with special signal processing, coming to the front speakers.

The matter is that a person, as it is known, has only two ears and makes conclusions about where the sound source is located in front or behind , analyzing frequency and phase characteristics of the perceived sound. By making certain changes to the played signal, you can “convince” people that they hear sound not at the front where the speakers actually are , but at the back, where there really is nothing. So, by “mixing” the processed signal from the rear channels with the main signal from the front speakers, you can achieve a very convincing imitation of the rear speakers in their complete absence in reality. The sound of the central channel, again, is obtained by coordinated work of frontal speakers, which due to special signal processing allow to position the sound of the central channel strictly in the middle between them.

Now that we’ve learned a bit about how the Harman Kardon HS 250 can reproduce multi-channel sound, let’s talk a bit about the other features of this technological, but at the same time surprisingly compact and attractive set.

It uses a 10-bit video DAC for DVD quality playback. DVD receiver is equipped with HDMI interface and component video output. In addition, there are additional connectors for video connections: composite, S-Video and RGB realized on Scart. In addition to regular CD and DVD playback, the Harman Kardon HS 250 can play MP3 or DivX discs.

Two USB-terminals are provided for playback of audio or still images stored on external digital media: one on the side panel and one on the rear terminal wall.

Harman Kardon HS 250 comes with The Bridge docking station, which lets you dock your iPod, operate it with the included remote and even recharge it.