I am uncertain how to rate this product. On one hand I love the sound and it has worked well for us. It is simple to set up and easy to program and use.
On the other hand there is no way to plug in a headphone nor an easy way to expand to accept a headphone (no audio out jacks except proprietary Bose). Evidently this was not true of the older ones. In any case we emailed Bose about the problem and never received a reply. We are trying another solution but it seems from this experience that Bose's customer service is less than stellar.
I would give the system 5 stars for its simplicity and sound at the price. We did not want to deal with an entire system of components for the time being. I would rate the customer service and expandability at 1 star. My bottom line is that I will not buy Bose again (well maybe their headphones which I like). This system does not expand well. I perhaps should have known it before I bought it.
If you still want the system knowing this you will love it based on my experience. Plug it in and go with some very nice sound for the price. If you are more like me then run away and find a company that plays well with others.
Upon returning home with my new unit from the Bose store, I was immediately confronted with two problems. When locally openning the tray, the system would quickly retract to close. Trying to operate the tray with the remote control revealed the second problem, the remote caused nothing at all to happen - no tray action and no on/off. After trying several times each with a new set of batteries, I called the store. The salesperson asked me to bring in the media center and the remote. Both were replaced from a new set. Since then (one week later) everything has worked beautifully. I especially like the uMusic Intelligent Playback feature. The sound is amazing. Kudos to Bose for both product and service.
This system really came highly rated by several people, and I did not hesitate to buy it based soley on the Bose brand. However, we've had it up and running since August '05 and have experienced problems playing DVDs. Everything else seems to work just fine - stereo radio has normal reception, simulated surround sound is suitable for what we wanted/expected, the CD-to-hard drive transfer and play back is slick and convenient, but movie play back seems to have a mind of it's own.
Almost always right around track 13 of whatever movie we play - either from our own collection or rented from the video store - play stops and the display says either "Unsupported media" or "Cannot Read Disc". And of course I made sure all settings were correct and that we were playing region 1 DVDs.
This unit is going back to the store. Hopefully we just got a bad unit; time will tell...
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"Beware - Bose does not play well with others"
"A Beautiful Musical Experience!"