Philips HTS-6500/37 Theater System

The Philips HTS6500 is an elegant and simple surround sound solution that promises a lot to people with tight spaces, tight budgets, or little patience. Being a long time home theater devotee I am at a point when just the speakers of the TV would never be enough, but after moving my 5.1 system several times to different apartments, I was looking to simplify my set up a little. Until recently the choices were limited to extremely expensive products from Bose, Sony, and Denon, which were way above my budget. With the arrival of this Philips 2.1 system the simple surround sound solution finally seemed within my reach.

The HTS6500 is very easy on the eyes with its elegant piano black receiver, which houses the slot loading DVD player, the tuner, and all amplification. The system is completed by two horizontally oriented speakers, and a rather large passive subwoofer. Neither of the included components are particularly heavy despite their size, but all of them seem larger than the competing more expensive systems. I have always had a soft spot for Philips, so based on design alone in my opinion the HTS6500 is the best looking 2.1 offering. There is a trade off for the cool look though, as the glossy piano black parts on the receiver and subwoofer attract a lot of fingerprints and from what I ve seen on various store shelves serious smudges in the long run.

The set up of the system was extremely easy and took less than 20 minutes with the unpacking included. I put it on top of my old receiver (which I am not ready to give up yet), set the two speakers on my TV stand s side shelves about 3 feet apart from each other, the subwoofer went in the corner of the room to the right of the screen, and I connected my projector with a component interlaced cable (the onboard Faroudja DCD-I processor in my projector is always better than the progressive scanning of the DVD players so I always use the interlaced connection). I turned the system on and . Nothing! The screen remained blank even though the display on the main unit was showing that the system was on. A quick check revealed that I had connected the component cables incorrectly so that fixed the problem. I also connected my regular TV with a composite cable, just in case that I needed to enable the component connection first, which some times is required. It turned out that all outputs were enabled by default so I was ready to go. Although the basic set up of the system was very quick and easy, I did run into a problem which required me to look up in the manual. After hooking up the system, there are several parameters which need to be adjusted to match the particular situation for best results room walls (hard or soft), speaker distance from each other (close, normal, or far), and listening position (close, normal, or far). To my surprise I did not find those under the general set up menu. After scratching my head for a while I gave up and opened up the manual, where I found out that those settings are called up by holding down the sound button on the remote control. After setting those up correctly I did notice a significant improvement in the surround effect. I d have to say this was less than intuitive, but not a big problem.

Now to the first serious problem I noticed immediately after I popped in the first DVD. The image on my TV had a significantly distorted geometry with the image being pulled downward in the right mid to low part of the screen. It was so bad that part of the Warning text at the beginning of the DVD had fallen outside of the viewable part at the bottom of the screen. Surprisingly everything appeared completely normal on my projector over the component output. I know it is not my TV because my old DVD player plays normal over the composite connection. I was curious to see the results with the S -video connection (which I was happy to see was included on the system a rarity these days), the distortion was present there too. So unless I ve got a defective unit, I need to warn anyone who might potentially need to use either the composite or S-video outputs. There is also an HDMI output for compatible TVs, but neither my TV nor my projector has an HDMI input so I cannot check that one.

If you were paying attention you probably noticed that I said the first SERIOUS problem above. This is because by default the system comes with several handicaps, which I am somewhat willing to justify with its lower price. Considering that it is only a 2.1 system, it would have been nice of Philips to include a digital output to route the sound through a separate receiver if someone ever wanted to upgrade without buying a new DVD player. The limitations of the connections don t stop there unfortunately. There is only one coaxial digital input, no optical in, and absolutely no video inputs of any kind, there are also only two analog audio ins, and no pre amp level output for a separate power subwoofer. This pretty much leaves no way for future upgrades, and leaves very little room for connecting additional equipment.

From all the missing ins and outs the one I wanted to see the most was a sub pre out, as the weakest link in this system is its subwoofer. I was hoping to be able to connect my old power sub, but that is impossible unless the sub has a speaker level input, which mine doesn t. The problem with the included subwoofer is that it just doesn t play low enough, but tries really hard. That makes the whole system to sound a bit cheap and overly boom-y. It sounds like the decoders are directing quite a bit towards the sub because it is constantly working, but does not blend particularly well with the two main speakers and a lot of the effects come out artificially exaggerated. Unfortunately there is no subwoofer control of any kind, you cannot select speaker sizes, you cannot select the power level, nor the cross over frequency, you simply can t adjust the sound beyond the available sound presets, which are really not adequate. I was somewhat surprised to hear the limited frequency response of the sub, as its driver is fairly large and normally passive type subwoofers are more likely to lack in volume rather than range.

I did encounter another problem only 10 minutes after setting up the system and I am afraid it could be even more serious. The loading mechanism would not eject the disc after several tries. I was really upset by that, because to me the slot loading mechanism is one of the coolest things about this system. I had to turn off the system completely from the power supply, let it stand for a few minutes, and then I was finally able to eject the disc. I am afraid of putting rented DVDs in it now though.

Well I feel like I ve already written a volume on this system and I haven t even gotten to the most important part yet the surround effect. I have to admit; at first I was more than mildly disappointed. My initial impression was that it just can t deliver what it promises. I kept trying different surround rich discs and comparing them between this system and my full 5.1 surround system and every time the result was the same I couldn t hear any effect, and my full system consistently deliver a much better experience. After a while though I concluded that this is not a fair comparison and settled in to just watch a movie on the Philips HTS6500. After several movies I have to say the results are not entirely disappointing, but the surround effect varies greatly from disc to disc. As I am writing this review I have the Star Wars Episode one disc running in the background and I am consistently amazed by all the action going on around me. I can clearly hear the surround almost entirely enveloping the room, with a hole in the sound only directly behind the listening position. The sound is bouncing surprisingly well from the side walls and the ceiling. The secret here though seems to be turning the volume down. This appears to be the only way to somewhat tame the overly productive subwoofer. I find that when I turn the volume up to a more theater like level, the subwoofer overwhelms the surround field and the entire experience is more tiresome than enjoyable. Also with other movies the results were much less impressive. The Quiddich (sp) scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets had very limited surround presence, where as on the true 5.1 system the effects were going all over the place.

Another part of the system that I have mixed feelings on is the video performance. The DVD player features the newer 12 bit 108 MHz digital to analog converter, which does indeed greatly improve the picture sharpness and color separation, but I noticed an unusual amount of motion blur on my projector, which I had never encounter before with my older players. I was also disappointed to find that there is no support for Pal format, even though the region code is very easy to change to 0 or any region desired.

On a more positive side, there are a few things I really liked, other than the design of course. The new style of the Philips remotes is a huge improvement over the previous generation of their gear. I really like the lay out, spacing, shape, and over all feeling of both the remote and the new system interface. I also liked the presence and clarity of the center channel, dialog consistently came out crisp and clear, very well position in the center field, and even slightly fuller than the center channel speaker of my 5.1 system.

I love the idea of the simplicity and the design of this Philips model, but I do feel that if I keep it I will be downgrading, rather than upgrading my set up and that just doesn t sit well with me. I am also seriously worried about the reliability and the possibility of having DVDs stuck in the slot loader and not being able to take them out. The distortion on the regular outputs and the overwhelming subwoofer do not make me feel much better either. As it stands I am almost certain that I will return this HTS6500 system and stick with my full 5.1 set up.