While it’s hard not to love the sudden explosion in affordable cinema-sized TVs that’s currently revolutionizing the home cinema scene, the arrival of screens of 85 inches and more in so many more living rooms around the world has brought with it a need for similarly epic sound systems. For while the sound systems built into many of the new breed of TV giants have actually tended to be pretty good so far by the standards of the TV world generally, epic pictures always feel like they’re only getting half the cinematic job done if they’re not accompanied by similarly epic sound. Especially in today’s world of DTS and Dolby Atmos soundtracks designed to put the viewer at the heart of immersive three-dimensional sound stages.
It perhaps shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, then, to find Hisense, the TV brand confirmed only days ago by industry analyst Omdia as the world’s number one brand in the 100-inch TV category, announcing that it’s introducing a new surround sound package specially designed to accompany TVs of 85-inches and more.
At its core, the Hisense HT Saturn home theater system comprises four wireless satellite speakers and a standalone 6.5-inch subwoofer, and is equipped with so-called Hi-Concerto Technology so that it can work in conjunction with the speakers in Hisense TVs, rather than simply replacing them. In effect, the TV’s speakers become the centre channel speaker.
The four wireless satellite speakers feature a sleek, compact design to help them blend into any living room decor, yet Hisense believes the 4.1.2-channel system (complete with two up-firing height channels) delivered by the 13 separate drivers the speakers carry between them is powerful and cohesive enough to create the sort of large-scale, full surround sound experience home cinema fans willing to bring a TV of 85 inches and more into their home will be looking for.
To make the HT Saturn system create as immersive an experience as possible, Hisense has equipped it with a Room Calibration system that automatically optimizes the sound to your room’s specific acoustics and layout. You also have access to five themed EQ modes designed to optimize the HT Saturn’s sound profile for movies, music, sports and so on.
Well connected
As you would expect of a modern premium home cinema audio package, the HT Saturn supports HDMI’s eARC feature, so that you can pass sound, including lossless Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, from your TV to the sound system over HDMI. Plus there’s a separate HDMI input so that you can pass pictures from external HDMI sources through the HT Saturn to your TV if you have any issues — such as lip-synch errors — when trying to use the eARC system. Other connection options include an optical input and Bluetooth 5.3.
It’s not entirely clear from anything Hisense has revealed about the HT Saturn what makes it a particularly great partner specifically for very large TVs. Perhaps something about the speaker tuning or optimisations in the auto calibration system work well with the sort of large rooms king-sized TVs are most likely to find themselves in. Or maybe the system is tuned specifically to harmonize particularly well with the spaced out speakers used in Hisense’s 85-inch and bigger TVs. Hopefully all will become clear — along with a price — when the system makes its debut at the imminent CES 2025.
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