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(TM) 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.
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.