We’re carrying on with our look at home theater systems, and we’ve got an admittedly rather unusual one for you today. Today we’re talking about the Onkyo HTX-22HDX, and though it looks strange, there’s nothing strange about its output.

The Onkyo HTX-22HDX is an ultra-compact, 2.1 channel home theater system that puts a subwoofer and a receiver in the same package, along with two satellite speakers, three HDMI inputs, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoders, four different game modes to ensure the best sound reproduction out of your games, and Onkyo’s propreitary Theater-Dimensional systems.

Compact? Oh yeah. Looks cheap? Yes, it does. But the sound out of this thing is a whole lot more than you’d believe out of a system that looks like this. It’s downright unbelievable that this thing actually works out the way it does, but there’s a simplicity to it that’s thoroughly unsettling. If you’ve got a really small room that you want big sound in regardless, then this one just might be exactly what you’re after.

Now here’s the part that might get you interested–the folks out at Amazon want $279.98 for this setup, and you’ll get a surprisingly powerful system with a whole lot of versatility for not a lot of money.

The Onkyo HTX-22HDX will definitely surprise you if you get a chance to listen to it, and though it doesn’t come with any video gear, it will do a terrific job of putting up your home theater audio. And in the end, isn’t that exactly what you came for?