Bose Lifestyle 48 Series IV – Home theater system – 5.1 channel – black
- Box Content – Media center, Acoustimass module, 4 cube speaker arrays, 1 horizontal center channel speaker, Remote control, 5 speaker cables
- ADAPTiQ audio calibration system
- Bose link AL8 homewide wireless audio link options to enable any room-to-room wiring
- uMusic intelligent playback system
- Integrated system design
Product Description
Experience a home entertainment system so revolutionary it will change the way you enjoy movies and listen to music. The Bose(R) Lifestyle(R) 48 Series IV DVD home entertainment system, the premier Bose system for both movies and music. Features award-winning Jewel Cube(R) speaker arrays for dramatically lifelike surround sound. A sleek center channel speaker integrates with the latest flat-panel televisions. The new VS-2 video enhancer simplifies the integration an… More >>
Bose Lifestyle 48 Series IV – Home theater system – 5.1 channel – black
I bought this item about 18 months ago and honestly I think I wasted my $4000
- sound system is not any different than other systems that cost only $400-$500
- it does not have HDMI connection
- remote control is terrible and designed very poorly
- you can’t categorize your music easily.
- You have to have your TV on to see your sound collection which is very bad design and not user friendly.
- when you send email or contact Bose, they do not even reply.
Please DO NOT WASTE your money, You can easily buy a better system under $1000.
Rating: 2 / 5
So this is what you get for $4,000. I’ve listened to this system many times, although I do not own it. I don’t hear anything special about it and can’t believe the high cost. I would not every pay $4,000 or even $2,000 for this. This fits between $500-$1,000 like many of the HTIB systems. There are no highs and no low’s with this. The bass is a joke…well, what bass. I realize many people want small speakers and good sound. You won’t get the same sound with cubes as you would with taller floorstanding speakers or even bookshelf type speakers, but these claim to be the same. They aren’t even close. For even $2,000 – $4,000 you can put together systems from Paradigm, Ascend, Boston Accoustics, Cambridge Soundworks, Polk, Klipsch, Aperion, Axiom, PSB, Harmon Kardon, Onkyo, Yamaha, Kef, and list goes on and on. Kef and Mirage are just two companies that make small speakers that will blow Bose out of the water. Don’t buy into the Bose hype and go try and research all the other quality speakers for yourself. Bose’s speakers are made from paper cones and plastic that I’ve heard companies can reproduce those same speakers for $30-$50. So your basically paying for the Bose name markup and nothing else. Just do yourself a favor and try some other systems out and do some testing and you will realize all the sounds you are missing.
Rating: 1 / 5
I bought Bose Lifestyle 48 System over a year ago. Overall video and audio are good, but minor problems include:
a) No Blue-Ray capability for DVD’s
b) Poor synchronization of remotes for peripherals like TV & cable; despite what Bose store reps tell you, you can’t control eveything with one push of the button – you might as well keep all your remotes.
However, MAJOR problem has to do with UMUSIC system:
One of primary selling points used by Bose store reps is telling you that you can load 200 CDs into system, the Bose will store & remember them all, and by Gracenote technology you can create infinite playlists based on music preferences, and never have to load/reload CD’s again. (technology is much like iTune Genius Mix).
Sounded great at the time to me so I bought it, and spent COUNTLESS hours (60? 100?) loading CD’s (each takes 10-15 minutes), categorizing them, then training the presets to play what I want (e.g. I don’t want Beach Boys singing their version of “Silent Night” when I want to hear a jazz mix…)
Then, one day, our power went out. Only for 10-15 minutes, tops. WIPING OUT ALL MY SAVED CD’S. Now there is no stored music. I talked to Bose rep, at his recommendation sent it to their service center (at my cost), and spent over $150 for them to replace hard drive, AND THEY COULD NOT RECOVER MY STORED MUSIC.
So basically right now I have a basic DVD player with a decent sound system. Needless to say I was P.O.’d. It will be FAR less traumatic for me at this point to connect up my iPhone & play my easily-personalized playlists from that than to waste another month of my life reloading CD’s into Bose.
Bottom line: don’t waste your money on this turkey. Or your time.
Rating: 1 / 5
I live in a high rise condo and hence a system with small footprint, but good sound quality for movies and cable was very important. I have the following sources feeding into the Bose 48 system:
1. LG BH 200 Blu Ray/DVD Player
2. Apple TV
3. Cox HD DVR
4. Polk Xrt 12 XM radio
5. Sony Digital Photo Album (not used much after getting Apple TV).
PROS:
1. Accepts a wide variety of audio formats
2. uMusic music playback quality is excellent since it preserves the original CD quality.
3. AdaptIQ really makes the sound all enveloping in my living room/dining room where it is set up.
4. Runs cool and hence can be placed inside a cabinet with no problems.
5. Super reliable and operating it, even with all the systems feeding it is easy.
6. Sound stage is impressive and both movies (I watch mainly Apple TV HD content and Blu Ray sound great).
7. Nice, small footprint speakers.
8. Nice thumping bass (the Acoustimass speaker has to be place correctly for best impact).
9. Tremendous flexibility when it comes to speaker placement.
CONS:
1. Video switching for component and s-video work fine with my VS-2 Video enhancer. However, the hdmi is flaky when connected to my Pioneer display (handshake issue – and therefore I am connecting my Blu Ray and Cable box video directly to the display (hdmi) and not going through the Bose 48 system. Apple TV is connected via component and connected via the Bose and it works fine.
2. When connected via hdmi, the DVD upscaling on the Bose is very good. However, the default connection (via component) is so so. Since I use my LG BH 200 to play both DVD and Blu Ray, it is not an issue for me. But when upscaled via HDMI, the DVD playback was very close to my Oppo DVD Player – which is often considered to be one of the best. In fact, once I saw the upscaling, I took out the Oppo from my system. However, the Oppo does play DVD-A and DVDs from other region.
3. At this price, Bose should have included DVD-A and SACD playback as well.
4. The analog inputs should have supported 5.1 (instead of just 2.0). I am using digital coax and optical because of this limitation. HDMI is for video only.
Given the overall performance of this system, the solid reliability and Bose customer support I give this a 4 star. The sound quality is far superior to the Sony 5.1 system that it replaced – by a big margin.
Rating: 4 / 5
I Purchased the Lifestyle 48 when it first came out. Did not take long to see lack of newer video formats, but I could live with that. I am very happy with sound performance and have no complaints, and don’t care about what material speakers are made of. They sound great and no issues. I have had remote control working the unit issues and they sent me a new remote no charge, but still operates inconsistently. The big complaint and maybe this is a component quality issue, I am getting a hard drive error message and Bose said the only fix is to send unit back and they will do a complete refurbish, for $170 dollars and I pay shipping to them. I have used the hard drive very little and this is poor performance for a premium priced product. Now if they were going to upgrade the video to HDMI on this refurbish then I say that would be OK. I hope I can use as a very high priced speaker system, but the Bose tech could not say that the unit will continue to work even if I don’t use hard drive. VERY POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE and VERY UNHAPPY CUSTOMER>
Rating: 2 / 5