Bose just announced two soundbar systems for home theaters, the Lifestyle 135 System and CineMate 1 SR System. The devices use a single bar to emit what many would call surround-sound audio and can be mounted almost anywhere in the room in almost any position.
The Lifestyle includes a small console with four HDMI inputs, a tuner, and an iPod/iPhone dock. The CineMate simply connects to any TV and both include remotes.
From the PR:
Bose FlexMount™ automatic placement compensation senses whether the speaker has been placed horizontally on a table, or mounted vertically on a wall. It then automatically adjusts the sound, offering owners two choices for soundbar setup with the same assurance of spacious, natural sound.
Bose® ADAPTiQ® audio calibration technology offers another performance assurance: the system will deliver optimal sound in any room. This
exclusive Bose advancement first recognizes where the system is located, and then compensates for how the acoustics of the space affect its audio quality — customizing the sound for the room’s unique size, shape, even furnishings.
Now for the bad news: the Lifestyle costs $2,499 and the CineMate costs $1,499. A wall-mount kit is sold separately. That’s obviously a crazy amount to pay for a speaker bar and a subwoofer, but Bose is expensive for a reason: the speakers pump out good enough audio in a package that requires absolutely no fiddling. After all, for the 90% of us who don’t want to tune our surround-sound speaker systems to the exacting specifications of our living rooms, there’s Bose. Available this month.
