Soundbars are popular for a good reason. The speakers in typical flat-panel TVs sound puny compared with the visual sway of increasingly larger, higher-resolution displays. Also, since not every viewing room can accommodate the separate components of a home theater, a narrow-footprint soundbar solves the problem of raising the impact of the audio and it does so with one cable.
Roku, a company known for its streaming media players and the user interface found in some smart TVs, has introduced the Streambar Pro ($180), a 4-speaker array with 2.5-inch full-range drivers housed in a 32.2-inch-wide cabinet. It has built-in Wi-Fi and supports 4K/HDR10 video from its built-in apps (but not Dolby Atmos). The Streambar Pro comes with a voice-enabled RF remote with a headphone jack for private listening. (Earbuds are included.) It has dedicated buttons for Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, and Hulu, plus ones labeled “1” and “2” you can assign to other favorite services.
Setup
I placed the Streambar Pro on the stand between the feet of my 55-inch TV and connected the included HDMI cable between the bar’s HDMI-ARC input and my TV’s HDMI-ARC port. (An optical audio cable is supplied for use with older TVs lacking HDMI-ARC.) Next, I followed the screen prompts to connect to Wi-Fi and set up a Roku account. You can press and hold the microphone button on the remote to spell out this information, which is faster than clicking through the onscreen keypad.
This story is from the August - September 2021 edition of Sound & Vision.
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This story is from the August - September 2021 edition of Sound & Vision.
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