Remember how, yesterday, I was complaining about a system that sounded great but didn’t have such great controls?  Today I get hoisted by my own petard when I get a dose of the alternative with the Onkyo HTS5200B.

The Onkyo HTS5200B is a 7.1 channel home theater system with six satellite speakers and a center channel speaker with twelve hundred watts of power.  It includes a two hundred ninety watt subwoofer, receiver with four HDMI inputs, four DSP gaming modes, and both iPod (even includes an iPod cradle) and Sirius Satellite Radio connectivity.

Like I said, today I get the opposite effect; the Onkyo has really, REALLY simple controls but the sound quality just isn’t there the way other systems would be.  I know that it’s a seven channel with plenty of wattage but it sounded almost crackly and distorted.  Not by much, admittedly, but I wasn’t as impressed as I had been with other systems, including some systems that just plain old cost VASTLY less.  This one, you see, will come your way for a downright frightening seven hundred bucks on Amazon.

The Onkyo HTS5200B is a pretty good system, but there are much, MUCH better options out there than this one will ever provide.