Bose® Lifestyle® T20 home theater system--Black
Review by Paul J. Sgrillo : Bose t20 Home Theater

I am thrilled with my purchase. I know from my web research that there are components which are found on the web which offer similar features at lower cost. Bose has a great overall rep and wonderfull product line. The deal maker for me were the reviews which lauded the ease of setup. I couldn't agree more. Extremely easy to get up and running. I want to paly with my new toy not try to figure out how to set it up. The quality of the components is also a big plus along with the Bose support.
Thank you Bose for your research and developement.

Bose® Lifestyle® T20 home theater system--Black
Review by Unbiased Reviewer : Like it but worse than expected

It performs well when I play video games using PS3 but falls short of my expectation when I play Blu Ray movies or regular CDs. In those instances I do not feel the "surround" sound much, and certainly not from the CDs. When I called Bose customer service, it was explained to me that regular CD doesn't produce surround sounds and most movies (even Blu Ray) don't also fully utilize the surround features. Honestly I'm not sure if I buy into that. I bought it because I'm not an audio expert but my sense of hearing can tell what's good sound and what's not.

In addition, when I hook up the PS2 through this unit using red/white/yellow cable, the output screen size is funky with my HDTV. So I ended up bypassing this with my PS2. Then there's not analogue cable input for me to hook up my Direct TV IN to this unit so it's also a waste on that. For such limited use, I do question the value of spending $1800 on this.

By the way, when I researched different home theater systems, I was shocked to find many 4/5 stars reviews on units that are $200-500 range. When I went to the retail stores to test hear them, they are nothing but just louder noises. So from that perspective, Bose's unit's sound quality is definitely crisp and very clear, but just didn't give the full "surround" feeling that I would expect as in a movie theater unless I turn the volume to be very loud.

Bose® Lifestyle® T20 home theater system--Black
Review by A. Kirk : Sound is Great, but Remote Control Is Frustrating

I am not going to review the sound quality of this device, as plenty of other people have covered that here. I am very happy with this system, but I want to touch on two things I did not see covered when I was researching this product:

1) The Good: You can use your existing surround sound speaker wire with this product. I looked and looked and couldn't find an answer to this before buying, and was worried I was going to have to get the proprietary Bose speaker wire fished through my walls. You don't have to do that. Just connect the ends of the Bose provided speaker wire to the wall plate, and then hook the speakers up. I am hoping this doesn't have any impact on the sound quality of the rear speakers, but if it does, I haven't noticed so don't tell me.

2) The Bad: The remote control does not work well with my Verizon Fios box. The set up of this system requires that all of your components go through the Bose box and you only have one HDMI cord going out to the TV. Therefore, switching the TV input does not allow you to move between your cable/sat box and DVD player, you have to use the "source" button on the Bose remote to switch. Although the universal remote provided is high quality, my preference was to keep using the Verizon Fios remote that was provided with my cable box, as we are used to it and all of the necessary buttons are there. I was able to set up the Bose system as the AUX source, get it to turn on when I turned on the TV and Cable box and the volume buttons control the volume of the Bose surround sound. However, the universal remote codes provided by Bose do not allow the Fios remote to control the "Source" that the Bose is displaying. Hitting TV input does nothing. Therefore, if I want to use the Fios Remote, I have to keep the Bose remote nearby when I want to switch to watch a DVD or Apple TV.

The other option is to use the provided Bose universal remote to control the Verizon Fios box. For most functions this works well, but it takes some getting used to. The biggest headache is that the Bose remote doesn't provide a dedicated "List" button to access your recorded DVR programs or an "On Demand" button. To get to those you need to hit "More" on the remote, which brings up virtual buttons on your TV screen, and you then need to arrow left or right to get to the button you were looking for. I can live with this, but there is one other BIG problem with the provided Bose remote that I haven't been able to solve.

With the Verizon Fios box, when it goes to "sleep" after periods of non-use, there is a message on the screen that requires you to hit the menu button on the remote to watch anything. The problem is that hitting menu on the Bose remote does not wake the system. Therefore, I am back to having two remotes so I can hit menu on the Fios remote to wake it up when turning on the TV.

This may not be an issue with other providers (where you can usually hit any key to watch), but this does seem to be an issue between Verizon Fios and the Bose system. I went into one of the Bose stores and asked the salesperson and he indicated that this was a known issue with Fios. I have not given up on finding a solution for this, but I have found the remote control frustrating. I will update if I find a solution (other than using two remotes)