Sony Goes (Very) Mini with HT-IS100 System

Meant to be heard and not seen, the strawberry-sized speakers in the HT-IS100 can be discretely hidden virtually anywhere in a room.

We’ve seen miniscule speakers done before by the likes of Bose and Orb Audio, but the latest home theater system out of Sony takes the concept to its logical extreme. Fresh out of Japan, the HT-IS100 features tiny speakers that Sony equates to the size of a golf ball.

The 5.1 system gets five of the mini dynamos to serve as the left, right, center and surround speakers, along with a not-so-tiny sub. It accepts three 1080p HDMI inputs with support for up to eight uncompressed audio channels for use with home theater systems.

Despite its discrete appearance, the system handles 450 watts (RMS) of power. It also includes extras like Sony’s Digital Cinema Auto Calibration tool for automatically configuring it to a room, and Dialogue Enhancer with Night Mode for boosting movie dialogue when you have the volume turned down low.

Although the system is brand new and was only recently even announced for the Japanese market, the speakers are actually the same one’s found in last year’s similar DAV-IS10 system.  The HT-IS100 will debut in July for with an MSRP of $700.