Bose 3.2.1 GS II Theater System

Update: The Bose is fairing well, there is a new TV for it to work with. I find it frustrating that Bose remotes aren't compatible with domestic brands, or any brand for that matter. That would save the remote clutter on ye old coffee table.

Our 3-2-1 has glitched up one time, to a serious degree. I rented a DVD- O brother, where art thou- and I notice, not right away, that I could hear the music soundtrack, but the vocal soundtrack was muted/not played. This resulted in cussing and ejecting and reloading and a general display of immaturity whilst pressing all of the buttons on the remote simultaneously. I finally went into settings and changed the sound quality setting of some sort. It fixed the problem, although I noticed later that it defaulted back to whatever I changed it from. I was glad I fixed it, but a machine of this quality should NOT have such issues.

I live very remote, and just bought a huge FM antenna plus a signal booster. The bose tunes very well, and it's easy to set the presets. However, I hear distant stations better on mono, rather than stereo. The machine defaults to stereo, making this adjustment standard everytime I turn on the bose. It should be remembered with the preset.

Oh well.

Was:
We bought it. One thousand dollars was the price tag. I thought the store demo was impressive for this Bose 3-2-1 Home Entertainment System. The box was heavy (speakers), but easy to open and get all set-up.

Now the TV set we own is old. Given its non-stereo tuner set-up, we had to buy this chinsy, yet required RF modulator ($20). I thought before purchasing this system would give us 321 sound through the TV channels. I was mistaken. Only if the TV has audio-out (stereo) is this possible, and even then, I am uncertain about how it all works. I think you will still have to switch channels through the TV remote. Evenually, we will be updating our TV, then I'm sure there won't be any issues. Either way, we don't watch much television, and though it was a minor bummer not to get television through the 321, that's life.

The reason for choosing the 321, aside from the sound issue, is its disc diversity. When I load a Compact Disc into the "media center'" disc tray, it doesn't matter if it is a CD, CD-R Audio, CD-R MP3, CD-RW Audio, CD-RW MP3, or DVDs. Whatever the flavor, it spins it up to play. It was that MP3 decoding that got my wallet out. Nine hours of music on one disc is a wonderful feature. I can just open the tray, drop in the disc and close the tray. The 321 figures out what you have loaded. I also worried about my computer's "version" of an mp3 disc (Apple OSX), but the 321 played it flawlessly.
AM, FM, Aux, Video 1 and Video 2 are the other "source" settings. If you are one to look to start with this set-up and add other speakers later, then forget it. This is the set-up-maxed out. Two 2-channel speakers and the Acoustimass module (subwoofer) is the limit to this system's sound output. Though that sounds limiting, I think they're are all I need. It's a slick system. The small speaker have multi-channel capacity to provide the surround sound effect.
The Remote is super simple. I hate all these complicated remotes on the market today, but this one has everything in a simple format. The menu screen on the TV can be easy to read through and to make adjustments.
The system also comes with some nice radio antennas for AM and FM. All of the cables come with the system for modern TV sets.

It should be noted that unless you have entertainment system shelving, be prepared to purchase speaker stands or wall mounts. Speaker placement is very important on these multi-channel speakers for the sound effects to work properly. Bose wall mounts are about $50-100, depending on store.

We just recently saw this system at a Bose store for $200 less (and that sucks for us, but good for others).