Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought this unit to replace my aging Home Theater system and also take advantage of the capabilities of the HD TV I already own.
First, the "Quick Start" guide tells you everything you need to know to set up the entire unit and get it operational. The Quick Start Guide covers both the HTS3565D unit (standard speaker design) and the HTS3566D which has surround sound towers. The English portion of the guide covers a total of four pages. An additional eight are written in Spanish and French.
Packaged in the box are the unit, remote control and two batteries, an RCA jack patch cable for composite video, FM antenna wire, user manual (in addition to the quick start guide), color coded and keyed speaker wires, screws (for the surround towers) and an iPod docking station. An HDMI cable is NOT included. Speakers are comprised of a center speaker (with one mid-range and two tweeters), two front speakers (each with a tweeter and mid-range), two surround speakers (with three mid-range and one tweeter each), and a sub-woofer with one twelve inch driver. This is a total of sixteen drivers.
All of this is contained in a single box that hides the fact that two towers are part of the system. This is accomplished by making the towers a two part unit that has to be assembled outside the box. All of the other components require no more assembly that hooking up the speakers (a very easy task with the color coding) and hookups for connection to the TV/projector, antenna, and iPod dock.
Assembling and placing all of the components is very easy and took no more than a half-hour if that. The Quick Start Guide is amply illustrated and written instruction very understandable and easy to follow. In fact I'll go so far as stating that the actual manual is almost superfluous.
The menu system surpasses my older unit by a considerable margin. As in the best units it is possible to make a myriad of selections from the menu including fine tuning the volume of each individual speaker via pink noise. Note that this fine tuning can only be done when the unit is in DVD operation mode.
Once operational, the unit supports DVD, AM, FM, two AUX inputs, MP3 input, and iPod input. It also has a pair of RCA jacks for Aux sound from the TV. Naturally this greatly enhances the sound quality of your broadcast television viewing.
The sound quality, while watching DVDs (with sixteen speakers I should not have been surprised) that I have yet to be able to watch a movie at half volume without the fear of disturbing my neighbors. The volume scale goes to forty (40), but I typically have to keep level at ten (10) or one quarter of the maximum volume.
With some tweeking I was able to lower the volume of the sub-woofer enough that I can now dial up a volume setting of fifteen (15). This is still remarkably loud.
I have only three complaints.
The first is minor and was temporary. After connecting the HDMI cable it took a while (maybe fifteen minutes maximum) for the unit to get both the sound and picture in synchronization. In other words I did not have sound for that period of time while the unit made some internal adjustments. This IS covered in the manual (thankfully as I thought I'd bought another defective product) and have not had a problem with it since. Note that the HDMI Audio in the menu system must be OFF to play DVDs through the player's speaker system.HDMI Audio ON is for component home theater receivers separate from the player.
Second, the surround sound speaker wire could be a few feet longer. This cannot be fixed by patching a few extra feet of wire yourself as the wire is already terminated with keyed, color coded connectors.
My third complaint is that the unit did not come with an HDMI cable. With a take home price of nearly $300.00 I would expect Philips to be able to afford throwing in a forty dollar, six foot cable. Naturally, the best picture quality dictates the purchase of this cable. That said the up-conversion is very good and seamless.
Finally, the picture quality is quite good, the sound amazing (the first war film I watched nearly blew me off the couch), and the reliably what I've come to expect from Philips. After having bought a competitor unit that did not work new out of the box, I was a bit apprehensive about this purchase. But after a month of use I am very happy with it. The external design in clean and complementary to most home decor. The picture and sound quality excellent and now I no longer anticipate buying a Blu-Ray unit at twice the price along with the associated high cost of Blu-Ray discs.
I feel I've made a good purchase.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Philips-HTS3566D - Home theater system with iPod cradle - 5.1 channel
Product Description:
Indulge in an unbeatable home cinema experience with this system. Delivering incredible surround sound and clear pictures via HDMI 1080p upscaling, it also plays from virtually any type of disc and from USB drives and portable media players.
Want to read more honest consumer review about Philips-HTS3566D - Home theater system with iPod cradle - 5.1 channel now ?
0 comments:
Post a Comment