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Review 2 of 2
Price Paid:
$170.00
from Amazon.com Summary:
I have an old 900 series Philips home theater receiver (FR940MKII), DAT deck, and CD changer(CDC935), along with Paradigm Titan speakers. This system at the time was the best system for the money producing great sound at a budget price. When I saw this Philips all in one player I was eager to try it based on my favorable past experience with Philips. Unwrapping the deck I was surprised by its small size and light weight. Definitely no high end (heavy) power supply in this deck. I tested the audio and video on two separate systems. For the audio I used a purist system composed of a Harmon Kardon 2100 Signature series power amp, mechanical switch box with volume controls and no tone controls, and Paradigm Titan speakers. I compared the CD player output with the above CD players, and found that this unit functions well as a stand alone CD player. It had a muted high end compared to the other CD players but vocals were especially smooth and harmonious. I preferred the Philips player to the HK8370, but found it slightly inferior to the similarly priced CD changer Sony CDC735, and definitely inferior to the Sony SACD deck, SCD-C333ES. MP3 decoding sounding surprisingly good, however the deck tended to skip frequently on the CDR disk I had prepared. Also Titles of the tracks were not displayed, just album and track number.
For the DVD function I hooked it up to the above system which only has a Dolby Prologic Decoder, and used the composite video signal input into my TV. This model lacks built in surround sound decoders, but these are available in more expensive decks by Philips. This shouldnt be a problem as even the cheapest receivers come with surround sound decoders.The manual was well written and the remote control was well designed. I recommend using the personalized settings to fine tune your picture as this helped my picture considerably. I was quite pleased with the picture quality and the surround sound experience even with Dolby Prologic, was very good.
This unit uses 96/24 DAC converters for audio but only 10 bit for video as opposed to the 12 bit now available. However the picture still looked fine to me. All in all a great bargain at this price. Strengths:
Value, Good Audio and Video Quality, Mp3 Decoding Sounds Great Weaknesses:
No built in Surround Sound Decoders, Skips On MP3 playback, Insubstantial Feeling Similar Products Used:
No similar. Compared CD player with HK8370, Sony CDC735, Sony SCD- C333ES
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