I am very proud of the new Boston Acoustics TVee One “speaker base.” I was heavily involved in the specifying and development of this product. The $349.99 TVee One functions like a soundbar, fits under the TV stand, and requires no separate subwoofer. In planning the product a year ago, we looked carefully at the competition, which at the time included just ZVOX, the patriarch of the soundbase category, and Bose, who had just entered the market with a very simple product (perfect for the masses). Bose’s product sells like hotcakes and has “legitimized” the market in a way that no other brand can. I am sure ZVOX is both flattered and terrified!

Anyway, the Boston Acoustics TVee One is built wider and sturdier than the Bose, so it can hold a larger TV. But we kept the height to less than 3 inches, same as the Bose. The ZVOX is a nice looking and great sounding product but is close to 4 inches tall – in fact, ZVOX makes a range of soundbase (their registered trademark) models that hold some pretty large televisions. But that 4 inch height makes the product look bulkier.

The Boston uses a pair of 2×5 inch drivers plus a pair of half-inch tweeters tweaked out by the acoustic and electronics tuning perfected by my friends Brian Cox and Glenn Rogge. The sound belies the simple driver set and bests the ZVOX models on many counts. We gave the TVee One 5 sound modes – a Music and Music Wide, a Movie and Movie Wide, and a mode that emphasizes Dialog. A Night mode lifts the bass a bit (at low listening levels) while cutting bass at high levels, so you don’t wake the baby.

The claim to fame of these sorts of products is the easy hook-up, which typically is just a single optical digital cable from television to TVee One, and the AC power cord. The product has coax digital and analog options as well, and auto-switches to the live input. The system includes a nice looking remote and can also learn to respond to your own television’s remote (or cable box or satellite remote, for that matter). Oh yeah, the product has Bluetooth A2DP with Apt-X as well.

The Boston model is marketed overseas as a Denon DHT-T100, owing to the stronger positioning of the Denon brand in those markets. Boston and Denon are both under the D+M Group umbrella of companies and share most design and operational resources.

TVee One … Is that woman real? Or simulated?

Go to the Boston Acoustics site

© Copyright 2013 Stephen Shenefield