Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony RHTG550.CEK TV Stand with Built in Speakers and 3.1ch Surround Sound System

one of the most striking things about this stand is that it blends with almost any LCD TV. I do not have a Sony TV but the set I have looks good on the stand.

The sound from the unit is great, there is enough bass to make you feel like you are in a cinema. The speaker bar at the front delivers rich audio however I get the feeling that the stand would perform better in a corner where the "surround" sound would have a chance to bounce off of the walls.

One small bug I have found is with the HDMI pass through, but this was mainly due to the equipment connected to it. For instance SKY HD does not seem to pass surround audio through HDMI and if you connect the optical cable as well as the HDMI the optical input is ignored.

I got this to go with my kdl40w5500, sony blu ray and an upgrade to Sky+ HD.
First of all, I'm impressed with the sound quality, the TV speakers are pretty weak and this really does liven things up. I don't get any obvious virtual surround sound despite ensuring input is 5.1 but that might well be the way that my room is organised. My previous TV had (cheap!) surround sound speakers but the effect from those was much more apparent.

Now the concern. If you have a sky+ HD box, it won't send the full dolby digital 5.1 signal to the amp if you connect directly via HDMI (it will send 2.0 stereo). You can only get 5.1 if you connect the Sky+ box to the amp via an optical cable. If you connect both HDMI and optical to the amp, it will default to 2.0 stereo, so those extra speakers won't be working as they should. The only way to get around this is to connect the Sky+ box to the TV via HDMI and to the amp via optical. That means that you have to fiddle around with remotes to get the right channel on the amp, and any HDMI auto switching doesn't work as it should - so you can't for example turn all devices off with a single button press and if you turn the TV on to watch Sky (which I do most of the time), the amp defaults to the TV input instead of the input from the Sky box - and gives you a stereo 2.0 instead of 5.1. Frustrating. OK you can work around it, but it means reaching for multiple remotes to do it.

You might blame Sky for this (I did initially) but having researched a bit more, Sony seemed to have missed a trick by not giving an option to choose to allow HDMI for the picture signal only and have optical for the audio input. It's a common feature on other amps so it's a little surprising that it's missing given the relatively high price.

just set up looks good, good sound, but do other owners have the fan or cooling noise in the background? when you are listening at higher volume you cannot hear it, but when the radio is on low volume you can hear it you have to turn the radio up until you cannot hear it any more! it is an annoying sound when you mute the system, maybe I will get used to it but I bet the wife will have something to say!
or is it faulty?

Sony RHTG550.CEK TV Stand with Built in Speakers and 3.1ch Surround Sound System

This is an excellent piece of kit.Easy to set up,looks the dogs and sounds superb.Absolutely no problem with producr at all.

This is a very good way to get great sound and link up to TV/DVD/Blueray, everything works together without fuss and wires everywhere.
I can recommend this system and it looks great as well