Review by mrcatman for LG LHB535 1100W Network Blu-ray Disc Home Theater System, Black
Rating:
We have a very simple setup, with 90% of our use being watching cable company’s DVR on the TV.

PROS:

- Very easy to set up

- Small speakers (i.e., wife-friendly size/dimensions)

- Wired internet worked quickly/easily

- LG updates downloaded quickly, installed easily (wired internet)

- Two HDMI inputs on the device is nice

- Support for internet streaming is nice (YouTube, Netflix, etc.)

- iPod dock is nice (charges too)

CONS:

- Sound quality is horrible

- Popping sounds changing LG’s input

- Popping sounds using DVR (even with each channel change)

- Awful “reverse” communication through HDMI to DVR

Let me give some more details on the CONS above.

Sound Quality

The sound from these speakers is best described as extremely “tinny.” All dialogue sounded nasally, like the actors had a cold. It’s not a subtle thing. It’s very noticeable, omnipresent – and completely distracting. We tried to adjust the speaker volumes, but the sound quality did not improve. The subwoofer had no “sweet” spot. It seemed to either produce almost non-existent low end or a dull “woofing” that was obviously too much – and nothing in between. Our previous all-in-one home theater was nothing special, and is very old; and it never sounded this bad. Even our TV’s built-in speaker (also nothing special) sounds significantly better than the LG. To us, the poor sound quality of the LG was enough to outweigh any of the positives this box has.

Popping Sounds Changing LG Inputs

When you change the LG inputs from anything to anything, you hear a popping sound in all speakers. It’s not loud, but it’s loud enough to hear it from the couch’s normal TV-viewing position. The popping happens regardless of listening volume level and even with sound muted. It happens whether you change inputs from the face of the box or using the remote. It happens no matter what you had connected to the HDMI ports (or if those devices were powered off) and even with nothing connected in/out HDMI. We called LG support on this. We triple-checked speakers were correctly connected, that there were no power/speaker wire cable crossovers and did their normal troubleshooting steps (reset the box, download all current LG updates, etc.). The popping persists. I don’t know if this is merely a defective unit or a problem with all their boxes, but it is a pretty annoying thing.

Popping Sounds Using DVR

The same popping sound from above (changing LG inputs) also happens during normal operation of our cable company’s DVR. Change the channel on live TV, it pops (every time!). Play a recorded show, it pops. Switch to On Demand, it pops. Our DVR is Time Warner’s DCH3416. It was connected from the DVR’s HDMI out to the LG’s HDMI input. The LG’s HDMI out was going to the TV’s input. As basic as it gets. The popping happened whether the DVR was connected to LG’s HDMI input #1 or #2. The popping happened with a second DVR box (we have two of them, same model). The popping happened even when no devices were connected to the other inputs. We don’t hear the popping if we connect the DVR to the TV directly (and TV optical audio out to the LG input). So it’s unlikely to be a defective DVR. Again, I don’t know if this is a defective unit or a problem with all LGs.

Reverse Communication through HDMI

I was under the impression that DVR (HDMI out) to LG (HDMI input) was a one-way communication. I.E., only video/audio would travel from the DVR to the LG, and nothing would travel through that same cable from the LG back to the DVR. However, strange as it may seem, the LG sends info back to the DVR. The net result is that the LG would change the DVRs settings and stop displaying the video/audio. You’d get an on-screen message saying it could not display anything. In researching this more, we found the DVR had a user settings, where you can set the “4:3 Override” mode. The factory default is “480i,” which will display standard-definition programs in 480i (720×480), but will automatically change to 1080i (1920×1080) when watching high-definition programs. This “switching” between resolutions messes up the LG, which results in the error and shutting off the video/audio.

So the easy solution was to set the “4:3 Override” mode to “Off,” which will create a widescreen version of standard-definition programs (adding black bars on left/right of picture). The result is the the cable DVR box now STAYS on 1080i resolution no matter what kind of program you are watching. The LG likes this, and is able to display video/audio properly.

Until you turn off the TV. When you turn off the TV (leaving the cable DVR box on, and the LG on), the LG resets the cable DVR box to “480i” mode, and the LG no longer can display video/audio. That means that the TV sent info back along the HDMI cable to the LG (even though it’s only connected from LG out to TV in), and the LG proceeded to send info back along the HDMI cable to the DVR (even though it’s only connected from DVR out to LG in). It’s the strangest thing we’ve ever experienced.

The net result is, every time you turn off the TV, the cable DVR box was unviewable the next time your turned on the TV. Obviously, this was completely unacceptable. After working with LG support, there was no solution. I don’t know if this was a defective LG unit (vs. a problem with all their units) or a problem specifically with our DCH3416 model DVR (i.e., newer DVRs might not have this issue?). But since we have two DVRs (same model), and the same thing happened with both, I don’t think it was a defective DVR unit.

There was another setting in the DVR to change audio from “pass through” to something else, which fixed the popping sounds (only using DVR, it still popped changing LG inputs), but because the DVR kept resetting as described above, the popping would return each time the TV was shut off.

Summary

Even if the popping sounds were not there, and the DVR was not resetting each time the TV was shut off, there still was the biggest issue of all – the sound quality was very poor. That alone was enough reason to return it. I recommend getting a different product.

Follow-Up:

I returned the LHB535 and bought the lower-end LHB335 to see if was any better. It also had all of the same problems (popping, HDMI backtalk to the DVR which stopped picture working on next power on) and ADDED the new problem of the tea-pot sounding “whistle” out of the speakers as others have experienced. The whistle happened as soon as the LG was powered on, even with volume down and muted. It is just omnipresent.

So it seems that the 335 model and 535 model have all the same issues. I still was unimpressed with the sound quality of the various sound field options (pcm movie II, etc.). The speakers of these LGs simply do not put out rich, well-rounded sound.

Other Products We Tried

We also bought (and returned) the Sony HT-CT150 soundbar/sub HTIB. It has 3 HDMI inputs (no Blu-Ray, no streaming, no real surround) and had sound quality on par with the LG 335. We bought (and returned) the new Samsung HT-C6500 (the best sounding, WAY better than this product), which would have been perfect except it had lip sync issues. We bought (and returned) the new Sony E570 (no HDMI inputs, but very good sound) with the idea of using the TV as the HDMI hub, and running TV optical audio out to the Sony just for sound. This would have been the perfect solution, but our TV is old, and the optical out (which we learned too late) does not pass the HDMI audio along. We also bought (and returned) the new YHT-S400 soundbar/sub HTIB. It sounded on par (or slightly better) than the Sony HT-CT150, but was expensive for what it was.

Conclusion

At the moment, all the HTIBs (1) in this price range, (2) with internal Blu-Ray and (3) with HDMI inputs have unacceptable issues (to us, at least)… assuming you use the HTIB as the “hub” for all our incoming sources. I recommend you get a decent HDMI receiver and grab the $135 Panasonic BD65 (Blu-Ray with streaming).

Review by DeAd MiKe for LG LHB535 1100W Network Blu-ray Disc Home Theater System, Black
Rating:
At the time of my current purchase (yes, current purchase – I’ll explain that later), the unit is $420 and is worth every penny. For that price, you get a very good Blu-ray player, decent speakers (I’ll get to that later too), and the ability to do all kinds of streaming to the device using either an Ethernet cable or the device’s built in Wireless N certified antenna. The main reason I wanted this particular unit was two-fold. One, it is the only decent Home Theater System that has the ability to play pretty much all types of media (MKV, AVI, DivX, etc…) off of a USB or from your home server. This was crucial. This device also just so happened to match the aesthetics of my LG 42LH40 1080p 120hz LCD HDTV (seen here: http://www.amazon.com/LG-42LH40-42-Inch-1080p-120Hz/dp/B001VJHWTQ – AMAZING television as soon as you turn off the ‘TruMotion’ feature). So, this Home Theater System matched my needs.

This was my first Blu-ray player, but I didn’t even really get it for that. Sure, Blu-rays are nice (I’ve since bought almost 10 Blu-rays since my first purchase of this device back in March), but I mainly wanted to be able to stream all kinds of media to something in my living room. My Xbox 360 can handle all of my media, but that’s in the bedroom. I needed something decent for the living room, and something to take advantage of my beautiful TV.

I’ve mentioned “current purchase” and “first purchase” in this review so let me explain that. This device originally had a manufacturing defect which caused a loud high pitch whistle sound (sounded like a tea kettle) to emit from the front right, rear right, and sometimes the center speaker. I was the first to document this online, and I did it on the Amazon message board on this very page. I also replied to several reviewers on this and the page for the LG LHB335 device. Others mentioned this problem on various websites (I’m not going to plug them here in my review), so trust me, this was a big problem. On top of that, I was in constant contact with the head of LG’s Quality Assurance team. After talking to him about the issue, he admitted it existed and promised to find a fix. I grew impatient and saw the price for this device drop (around $80 from what I originally purchased it for) so I decided to return it and thought I would re-buy it at a cheaper price once he assured me a fix was found. Well, a fix was found. I re-purchased the device and it’s working flawlessly. The devices with the issue were manufactured January 2010. The fixed ones are April 2010 and later. I’m sure there are some January 2010 devices that didn’t have the whistle, but I couldn’t confirm that. If anyone has a January 2010 device with no whistle sound out of the right speakers, please let me know!

So, back to the review. There have been some firmware updates lately that added some new features (MLB TV and Napster), so make sure the first thing you do when you get the device is to update the firmware. It’s also good to do a factory reset the first time you do that just in case (me and at least one other person have noticed a bug that was solved when we did that – but it’s possible that the bug would have been fixed with the firmware update that was released a few days after that – I don’t know). It’s also a good idea to go into the speaker settings and adjust the speaker distance (the amount of feet between each speaker and your usual listening position). Now, this device came with rather short speaker wires (probably the shortest out of any Home Theater System I’ve ever purchased). This was solved with less than $10 and a quick trip to Radio Shack. I’m glad the speaker connections aren’t proprietary like some other manufacturer’s models out there. Let’s get to the sound.

The sound is pretty impressive. It’s possible that the people complaining about the sound are doing it for two reasons. For one, maybe they used the short speaker wires and thus, their speakers are too close together. Mine are pretty far apart from each other, so I have no sound problems. For two, it’s possible that they left the default 2-channel sound output set to Natural (or was it Natural Plus?). For two-channel stereo audio, I didn’t like this very much. Changing it to ‘PL II Movie’ made two-channel stereo audio sound NICE. I have 0 complaints about regular stereo audio anymore. By default, the receiver is properly set to output 5.1 channel audio with the ‘Bypass’ setting. This means that the receiver does no artificial mixing of 5.1 channel sound. It outputs it exactly as it is given it. This is the right way to do it. The receiver will also remember your settings for 5.1 channel and 2 channel, so don’t worry about having to manually switch it to Bypass for 5.1 and to PL II Movie for 2 channel. Go to something that is 2 channel (like the FM radio, or a DVD menu), change the sound output to PL II Movie once, and never worry about adjusting the sound output again (unless you are strictly listening to CDs or MP3s and then you will have various different music outputs to choose from). So, due to changing the stereo output and having the speakers at a nice distance, I really love the sound output of this system. I did notice that the bass was a little low by default so I increased the sub-woofer volume to 3 and it sounded really good. I tried changing it to 6 at first but that was WAY too much bass for me. 3 was a perfect level.

Hooking the system up to my Wireless N network was a breeze. To make matters easier, I broadcast my SSID so the Wireless N device inside the device would pick up my network, I put in the password once, and it was a go. I then disabled the broadcast of my SSID, turned the unit off, turned it back on, and it automatically re-connected without a problem. It remembers your password and automatically logs you in to your network so you never have to worry about that again. Good. Clicking on Homelink I was greeted to my wireless network. I saw the one for my router (if I plug a USB device into my router, I can stream things off of it), and I saw the one for my PC. Before it would connect to my PC, I had to go into Homegroup in Windows 7 and make sure the device was set to ALLOW. Once done, I was inside my PC’s video library. 14GB 1080p MKV files streamed fine over my wireless connection where my device was 50 feet from my router. The only time I would run in to a problem was when I would try to fast-forward a large file. I’m not sure if this is because of the device, or my wireless network, so I won’t blame the device. However, fast-forwarding a file when played on a USB (and naturally, off of a Blu-ray disc and a DVD) worked fine. So the issue was definitely wireless related. It’s probably too much to ask to be able to fast-forward such a large file over WiFi, but I don’t care as long as it PLAYS the file fine. It does. you can pause it all you want and it will resume instantly as soon as you press play. This was all I wanted.

The player had no problem playing files off of each of my USB sticks, but there was one thing I noticed. If the USB external hard drive was formatted to NTFS, I could just plug it in and the device would pick it up right away. If the USB flash drive was formatted to FAT32, I would have to turn the device off and turn it back on for it to recognize it. It may be because of my particular USB flash drive, or it may be because it is FAT32 and not NTFS. Either way, not really a big deal. As long as I can play all file types off of FAT32 and NTFS, I’m happy.

YouTube, Pandora, VuDu – all worked fine. I don’t have a Netflix account (yet) but I’m sure that works fine as Netflix is the feature they promote the most (a sticker for it is on the device itself, and in the box, and on the box). If you open up VuDu, make sure to go into the options and check out the overscan settings and make sure it is appropriate to your HDTV so nothing is cut off. YouTube works well, it seems to stream videos at whatever their default resolution is (whether it is 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p). You can log in to your YouTube account so I’m sure that if you have your account to display HD video by default, that it would do that on this device. I don’t really care to find out since I have a PC for YouTube. I just wanted to see if it worked. It does. It will store your YouTube history and not present you with an option to clear it, though. Doing a factory restore will clear your history (among other things) in the event that you reaaaaaaaally need to clear your history.

Let’s talk Blu-ray. When I first got the device, I had a little problem with some movies when playing them at 24 frames per second (which you will want to enable as long as you have a 120hz/240hz LCD, or Plasma HDTV) but that was promptly fixed with a firmware update a week after I e-mailed LG about the problem (apparently, their whole line of this year’s Blu-ray players were affected so I’m sure I was not the only one contacting them about it) and I have not had a problem since. If you don’t know why you would want to set it to 24hz instead of 60hz – to make a long story short, it will play the movie at the proper framerate because film is recorded at 24 frames per second. Don’t worry, it WILL know when you are playing something that should be in 24 frames per second (Blu-ray) or 29.97 (DVD) and play things at the proper frame rate as long as you have 24hz selected. If you have 60hz selected, everything will play at 60hz. So, once again, do 24hz if your HDTV is above 60hz (like 120hz or 240hz). If not, don’t worry about it.

Movies, at first, looked crappy to me. That is, until I went into the options as a movie was playing and set the output to ‘Movie’ from whatever the default was. This made everything perfect again (like my previous DVD player would have things look). I don’t know why it is not the default option, but it should be. I took the time to properly calibrate my HDTV so I know when colors are off. Doing this fixed everything right up (for me, at least). So, if you notice the picture looks a little odd; maybe colors are off or you notice some aliasing or something, change it to Movie and you’ll be set. Colors will look amazing (provided your HDTV is properly calibrated).

DVDs (and movies off of the USB) load instantly. Blu-rays can take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds to load, depending on the movie. This seems to be normal. Playing a movie off of my home network takes about 5 seconds to load, no matter the file size.

I noticed some people describing the menus as sluggish. While this was true of the old firmware, it’s definitely not true of the current one. The menus move just as fast as any menu.

Also, since I have an LG HDTV, hooking this device up to it via HDMI eliminates the need for my HDTV’s remote (it has since gone into a drawer). The remote that came with this device (which is very nice, comfortable, and offers lots of buttons for all kinds of different things) can turn on the TV, change inputs if you need, and do some other things. It can’t do everything, so make sure your LG HDTV is set up properly, then hide the remote once you get this since you won’t really need it again.

This device has TWO HDMI inputs and one output. This is more than enough for me. I have the cable box as one input, and since it has a built in Blu-ray player, the HDMI output handles that since the receiver doesn’t need another HDMI input to handle Blu-ray. I tested out my Xbox 360 in the second HDMI input and that works just perfectly too. The device will remember your last input, so if you leave it on HDMI 1 and power it off, it will return to HDMI 1 when you power it back on. This is how it should be (some other manufacturers don’t do this for some bizarre reason).

It’s very easy to work, especially when everything is working properly. I haven’t tested out the iPod dock yet (since I don’t own an iPod or an iPhone), but it plays MP3s off of my phone and standalone MP3 player just fine. The FM (and AM) radio work fine as well. The system can be pretty loud. I normally keep it on 10 for regular cable viewing (15 if it’s a movie where I want to really enjoy the loud sound). So, don’t worry about the system not being loud enough. On my old unit, I noticed a lot of pops when changing channels, or when the bass got too loud, or whatever. On the new one, I haven’t come across this yet – so either I am lucky enough to have not come across it again or LG has fixed that along with the whistle sound.

All in all, this was a very buggy product at first, but NOW it is working properly, so I will give it a 4. It would be a solid 5 if those problems never existed in the first place. I would have given it a 3 or less if I were still running in to some problems. But, everything is working as expected, so I really have no complaints other than my time being wasted in the past with researching the whistle sound and sending it in to LG for repair, or back to Amazon for a replacement, and everything else. I would also like to point out that Amazon was very generous to me in regards to replacing and returning this item several times. I’m up and running now with no problems and my movies look and sound perfect, so I’m willing to forgive LG for the bugs and wasted time.