Audio Video News

The once-popular home theater in a box (HTiB) category faded but never completely went away. In April, Pioneer revived the category in its line and now Yamaha is expanding its HTiB offerings with two new 5.1-channel bundles that gives you everything you need except a Blu-ray player (assuming you even want one) .

Slated for delivery in early July, the YHT-4950U ($500) and YHT-5950U ($600) packages are anchored by a 5.1-channel AV receiver that supports 4K high dynamic range video (HDR10 and Dolby Vision) and include front left, center, right and two rear surround speakers plus a stand-alone subwoofer and speaker wire for connecting all six speakers to the receiver.

The receiver is equipped with Yamaha’s Cinema DSP 3D sound-field processing plus Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD decoding and provides four HDMI inputs and one output with Enhanced Audio Return Channel (eARC) support for simplified wiring.

Both systems support Bluetooth streaming but the YHT-5950U ups the ante with Wi-Fi-based wireless multiroom streaming via Apple’s AirPlay 2 or Yamaha’s app-controllable MusicCast platform, which provides ready access to Spotify, Apple Music (via AirPlay 2), Pandora, Tidal, SiriusXM internet radio, Deezer, Napster, and Qobuz streaming services.

The 5950U also supports voice control via today’s popular virtual assistants — Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon’s Alexa — and has a MusicCast Surround feature that gives system owners the option of using wireless MusicCast 20 speakers in place of wired rear surround speakers.

The YHT-4950U includes Yamaha’s Virtual Cinema Front mode for setups that can’t accommodate rear surround speakers. The processing creates virtual five-channel surround sound when all of the speakers are in the front of the room.

For more information, visit usa.yamaha.com.