We were initially referred to this existing theater to reprogram the client’s TSU-9600 theater remote by Philips Pronto as we are their certified installer in the area. The home theater had a lot of things going for it like the nice mission style entertainment cabinet, quality components and a relatively good basic design layout. As we often see, a few integration and design details were overlooked, which were downgrading system performance. Our findings:

• The 1080p Panasonic Plasma was displaying only 480p DVD quality from the BluRay player due to improper connection and setup
• Comcast setup was wrong and HD channels were showing standard definition video
• Reference Polk center channel had no tweeter, which ended up being a loose biamp speaker binding terminal
• Center channel speaker installed 6′ high, but not even aimed downward towards listeners
• Reference Polk L/R speakers installed horizontally with wrong tweeter orientation resulting in a collapsed stereo image and reduced bass coupling
• Comcast/BluRay only outputting stereo and not configured for 5.1 surround sound output or True HD audio
• No speaker setup or calibration done on the Denon AV receiver, X-over points wrong for no subwoofer output
• Subwoofer amp defective but how could you tell, it never had bass sent to it since being installed
• Pronto remote unusable to clients because of incomplete programming
• Overheating gear stacked directly on each other blocking all ventilation which shortens equipment life

Other than a few needed cables that needed replaced, quality of the entire system was dramatically improved with our THX system setup and an AV calibration, plus a small charge to program the Pronto.