Bought this last Xmas when it was on sale on Amazon. It’s excellent. Bought some speaker stands for the rear two as well, which is a nice compliment. The sound quality is always excellent, though what you’re watching will depend on how much surround you get. The surround is so dynamic and accurate for almost everything I watch that sometimes I forget it’s on and the rear speakers scare me.
This also works excellently for listening to music via Bluetooth.
There are lots of settings as well, including one for lowering the overall “boom” of the volume in case you live in an apartment (like me) or a house with kids. This was impressive and important - the last surround sound system I had was either so quiet you couldn’t hear the dialogue or so loud it would literally rattle the windows.
A quick Google Search didn’t yield any results for cable extenders, but it’s always possible that they are out there, I suppose. First thing I’d probably ask is how large the room is. When they say 15 feet, it’s 15 feet in either direction. So, say you had a centralized location to place your sub (say behind a couch or something) you would essentially have a span of 30 feet to work with. The other caution I might give you, sicne you mentioned having a large room, is that there is a larger version of this unit that you might consider. This is rather compact at 42" wide. While it gets loud without any significant harmonic distortion, if you have a gigantic area, it might not fill the room the way you are seeking. Anyway, what are the dimensions of your room so that I have a better reference for how much area you are trying to fill?
Is there an Apple TV with analog outputs? An older generation perhaps? I thought the new ones had digital optical out. If yours has the TOSLINK Digital Optical output on the back of it, you can use that and go directly to the soundbar. This soundbar also comes with a digital optical cable in the box. At least mine did. So you wouldn’t necessarily need to buy anything extra. I hope that helps.
Purchased one of these through Woot 05/2/2014 and absolutely love it! Price was $199 at that time it was well worth it. In fact I liked it so much I bought the 38 inch 2.1 version (also through Woot) on 12/06.
A few points from my end:
-Set up is very easy
-Bass is strong and deep
-I know some people balk at refurb items but I enjoy going that route. My unit arrived looking brand new.
-When I researched this item, I read some comments about the sub losing communication with the bar. I’ve never had an issue
-If I had to nitpick, I’d mention two items. #1 is when switching inputs (Ex: Bluetooth back to optical) it sometimes can be a bit finicky. Tip: If you get to the input you want and you have no sound, try hitting volume up/down a few times. That usually fixes the issue. #2 is that the levels can sometimes have too much space in between. Better put, you want it louder, hit ‘Volume Up’ once, and now it’s a tad too loud. Again, both of these are nitpick items and should not keep you from picking this up.
Bottom line, if you are seriously looking, I’d say go for it!
There should be something in the manual regarding audio data and how many channels it will output. I can tell you from extensive reading over at AVS Forums (a website I strongly encourage for any audio enthusiast) that even though manuals will suggest that 5.1 passthrough is possible, in actual real world tests the only time they actually pass it through is from Over-The-Air (OTA, and sorry if I’m overexplaining something you already knew) transmissions. It has something to do with, I believe, HDCP compliance (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection). I don’t know how Sony and Vizio have gotten around it, but their TV’s are confirmed to pass through 5.1 regardless of the source material. Some newer Toshiba TV’s have also been confirmed to work. CNET has a short guide about this. If I get a chance this evening I’ll log back in and post links.
Long story short, though, you can avert all of these problems by simply sourcing the soundbar from your content device directly, rather than sourcing it from the TV.
I have had this for about 9 months now (even though I did not buy it here). The VIZIO S4251W-B4 42" 5.1 Home Theater Sound Bar w/ Subwoofer & Satellite Speakers.
Here are my thoughts on it even after 9 months.
This fills the space in my home theater area 20’x45; pretty well and even the bass pretty good when it is up against something. I use the side of the couch. This would work very well in an apartment setting. Sound is good, and relatively clean.
This is not an audiophile unit. I use this with an AppleTV and use the optical connector. It cleans up the signal pretty well, but it is not as tight as I would have hoped.
Other Thoughts: Not disappointed at all for what I bought it for. The surround speakers are good enough and clear enough to add to a small area nicely. It is a bit better than HDMI sound using the optical. The bass can get a bit over whelming (a good thing) so try setting it up over a couple of movie and music to get the balance right.
I bought this last year from Amazon for i think $240 new to replace my messy 5.1 RCA system from 2007. I wanted a soundbar for that clean slim look and cut down on the clutter, but i didn’t want one of those all-in-one 5.1 soundbars; I wanted a soundbar with dedicated rear satelite speakers for TRUE 5.1 sound. This absolutely delivered. I’ll skip straight to the point, the sound quality is fantastic, with customizable EQ settings. You can really crank the volume on it too, and i never experienced distortion. It has a wealth of input options available, but just having a single optical cord going out to the tv is wonderful. This price is definitely a steal; hell i’d buy it again at full price.