Philips hts 3569 - a brief review

After a long search of 4 months, a dozen or so auditions and browsing through a multitude of online reviews, I finally zeroed in on the philips HTS 3569. I bought it at xcite store, koramangala, Bangalore for around 22k.

I'll not go through the specs as they available online at philips website.

The Package: Philips HTS 4569 is a large box with four wooden tower speakers, one large center and a pretty compact passive sub woofer (compared to what i saw in onkyo htib). The speakers can be easily assembled thanks to the color coded speaker wires.

2 gripes I have here is:
Missing hdmi:I just don't understand why do these companies supply just a yellow video cable, when the htib is designed especially for hd movies and a LCD TV. Really blows to spend 1k for a seperate hdmi cable, after spending 22k on the system.
Just 8m rear speaker cables: Was really insufficient for me, but maybe its just me here.

Movies:
Ok, so getting down to business. I tested the system with LOTR and The Dark Knight. LOTR has some amazing battle scenes and a lot of sequences with a lot of stuff happening on the camera simultaneously. Perfect for a test I would say. I played the 'wolves of the isengard' chapter from 'the two thrones' and the initial scenes from 'fellowship of the ring'. The sound is just amazing - you got to hear it to believe it. Some examples would be: The scene where the wolves
attack from every direction is brilliant, makes you turn back a few times. The scene where orlando bloom shoots the arrow, you can clearly see it coming out from rear to front speakers with a clear whizzz, just as it traverses on screen. The Dark Knight's joker chasing dent sequence is brilliant, where you can clearly hear the gun shots and explosions all around you. You just feel as if you are living the scene. Even minute sounds like unrolling a chain, ppl chattering in the background, stepping on leaves, pebbles hitting the ground won't go unnoticed, even at low-mid volumes, which is brilliant IMO. And this is exactly how a HT is supposed to perform.

The video reproduction is simply awesome with a hdmi cable and its damn hard to believe this was just dvd. Even divx videos look absolutely stunning.

Completely satisfied in this regard, the movies play exactly or even better than I expected.

Music:
I tested with the below tracks:

1. Its Tricky - run dmc
2. Nothing else matters - Metallica
3. Engel - Rammstein
4. Main aisa kyon hoon - Lakshya.

Its Tricky will blow your neighbours away when you just reach the mid volume. Hard to believe the passive sub can generate so much of bass. The furniture was literally shaking in my room. The guitar and the drums were excellent in Engel and the vocals of 'Nothing else matters' and main aisa kyon hoon with the thumping effect was awesome as well. However I was highly dissatisfied with the mp3 performance. Its actually pretty average to bad, with distortions all around (blame it on the quality of the mp3 track), but the same is played by my ipod in a much better way. So considering I
listen to more mp3, this is a real downer for me. And I was surprised that I was not able to play my ipod connected through a stereo-stereo cable to the mp3 line in. WTF ? It clearly says in the manuals, mp3 player can be added. So ipod is not considered a mp3 player ? Need to settle this with the demo guy who is yet to arrive to my home from philips.

And last section is reproduction of stereo sound to 5.1 using dolby prologic II. This is plain horrible and I turned off after 5-10 mins. The sound is jarred and I felt my TV sounded better here :/

So rounding off:

Pros:
Wooden casing for speakers. Hard to find in this price range.
VFM: check, can't get better with a htib with dvdp, priced at 22k
Music: check, as long as you play the original cds
Movies: Check, brilliant, and really lives upto its name 'Home theater'. You can also play divx movies out of usb - another plus.

Cons:
No hdmi cable
Horrible stereo to 5.1 coversion
mp3 playback is quite bad
A boomy bass at factory settings. need to calibrate according to your taste.
Calibration requires you to eject what you are playing ! Mildly irritating at times, especially if you are the one who loves repeated tinkering with the settings.
Ipod doesn't play when connected through stereo-stereo cable to the mp3 line in.
No optical in

In conclusion - don't expect a yamaha+jamo combination here. It does more than better at what its supposed to do given the cost of the product. IMO, its hard to find another player which plays movies so well at this price range.

is it better than onkyo 3105 & 5105 and is it able to connect with computer. if so whats the procedure.

Can be compared with Onkyo 3100/3105. 5100/5105 are more powerful/expensive and not really in the same league.

how much onkyo 5105 costs? any idea

Around 30K or so. Check at Reliance Digital, Croma, E-Zone, X-Cite for best prices/deals.

so Mr. moserw u have panasonic CRT with onkyo 3105. are u satisfied with that?

and one more doubt if i want to connect either philips 4750 or onkyo 5105 or 3105 with my computer am i need any seperate sound card for that. at present i have 5.1 inbuilt sound card. why bcoz i am watching DTH in my PC only. using TV tuner card with 22inch monitor.. any idea?

5105
You will get it for Rs 28000 in chennai.

oh really can u give me the address of that shop?

Viveks Showroom,Spenzor plaaza,Chennai.they have demo room also.You have to bargain for getting the piece for Rs 28000.Their actual price is Rs 33000.was ready to sell it for Rs 29000 with out any bargain.