reprieve

When we bought our big 50-inch Panasonic HDTV about 2-3 years ago, we took advantage of a great deal at Best Buy -- free delivery, and a free home theater system (worth $150) came with the TV. That home theater system was made by Koss Electronics, which I guess was a subsidiary or side-venture of Koss Corporation. Koss is best known for their headphones, which I believe have a pretty good reputation. Unfortunately when they got into the home theater and stereo business it appears their products were not nearly as good, and eventually Koss Electronics went out of business. Um, that can't be good.

So for the first 2 years or so, the Koss KS5192 system that we got was working just fine... it played DVDs, was easy to setup, and the 6.1 speakers sounded pretty darn good with Dolby surround and DTS movies. It wasn't until this past year that we started noticing some weirdness. The DVD player would freeze in the middle of a movie for just a split second, even with brand new DVDs. That was annoying. Then I wanted to connect my PS2 or my Comcast cable box to the receiver to get surround sound using the optical input. The sound came through, but there was a noticeable delay in the audio that made it worthless -- the sound would come half a second after someone spoke in the video, or sound effects were delayed in a game. OK, annoying but I'll let it go. The last straw was when the Koss player started making loud grinding noises whenever you turned it on ... sounds like the cooling fan is vibrating or hitting something. Well what do you expect for a system they were selling for $150? At least I got it for free...

I starting looking at new receivers. I figured the Koss speakers are actually not that bad, maybe if I just get a dedicated DVD player and a new receiver I can still use the speakers, and the problem is solved. I was looking at the A/V receivers by Denon, because I have a connection that can get me virtually half-off of retail price. The AVR-2807 is really attractive, with all kinds of great features like HDMI switching, but it's not cheap. And I wasn't sure I needed such high-end audio hardware for my peasant ears. So i kicked it around in my head, but never made a decision to buy.

Then the PS3 came into my home entertainment system and with it came HDMI outputs, Blu-Ray playback and hopefully someday soon the possibility of functioning as an upscaling DVD player. With all the issues, the Koss just wasn't cutting it. Time to upgrade! Well before I dropped some mad cheddar for the 2807 I thought I would give the Koss one last chance. I went online to see if others were having the same issues and see if there were any fixes.

After a little searching I came across several online discussions about the KS5192 and its little brother KS4192. Most of them complained about the same audio delay and grinding fan issues, and most people said they ended up buying better receivers. They also reported that customer service from Koss was a joke, seeing as how the remaining Koss company was trying to distance itself from the Koss Electronics demise. I was about to give up and get the Denon but then I came across a thread that mentioned some kind of firmware upgrade that could fix the audio delay problem. The website for Koss Electronics was no more, but thankfully some other users had archived the upgrade files. It was a little risky -- some people reported it fixed their problems, while others reported it rendered their player completely useless. No pain no gain, so I downloaded the files, burned them to a CD and followed the upgrade instructions. Amazingly it worked like a charm -- now the audio syncs up to the video just fine, and I can play games on my PS3 in full glorious surround sound.

As for the video skipping or freezing, I put in a lens cleaner disc and let it run for a few minutes. That may have helped as the movie I played after that worked fine. So it looks like I may have bought myself a little time with the Koss system, until the fans disintegrate and the whole system fries.