Philips MX3800D

Great sound crisp and clear! good subwoofer, value for money. However, dvd playback problems after a year.

In my opinion, an excellent choice for your money, very good sound system and very good in dvd playback!

Don't bother with just a DVD player. Buy a surround sound system like the Philips MX3800D and enjoy the full cinema experience. You don't buy a CD to listen on a mono player so why put up with the disapointing sound from your TV.

This is the second one of these in 3 weeks first one had lip sync problem this one goes back next week the volume keeps going up and down on voices.

I went to Currys looking to buy A new surround sound system £350 Max. What I wanted was a system that had crystal clear rich sound, DTS playback, good bass, lots off functions and it had to look cool and stylish. I tested ALL of the systems in the store (which really naffed the sales reps off LOL). The only one out of my extensive tests that fitted my criteria was the MX3800D. The thing that sold it to me was the Subwoofer there was no comparison, it had the best bass sound in the shop. It has something called wOOx technology?? What ever that means. So I bought it £329.01. I got it home set it up, which took all of an hour and very easy indeed. I Tweaked with the speaker settings on the on screen menu to suit my needs then put Saving Private Ryan DVD in. AMAZING!!! It blew me away. Not literally but it nearly did because I had the Subwoofer set on Maximum, It shock my rib cage, It was fantastic!!! And playing a DVD with DTS playback is twice as good, more bass, and louder clearer sound.

As you can tell I am very pleased with the MX3800D but there are a few (only a few) little things that niggles at me. The sound settings that are ( Classic, jazz, Rock, Digital in Music mode) and (Concert, Drama, Action, Sci-Fi in DVD mode) don't really sound that different to me.

And the remote control frequency interferes with my TV set.

This is one Muther of A surround sound system.

Go out and buy one NOW!! (or when you can afford it) :)

Not having owned a DVD player let alone a home cinema system previously, I was torn between getting a more expensive DVD player and sacrificing the sound or going for the all-in-one home cinema option. After trialing a (different) Philips home cinema system, I decided that sound was equally, if not more important than vision only, and so I chose to go for a home cinema DVD system. If anybody is thinking that they can get away with just the sound output of their stereo TV, they are very, very wrong.

The Philips MX3800D is extremely easy to set up, it took me 20 minutes from opening the box to switching on.

Being a 5.1 all-in-one home cinema system, 5 speakers and a subwoofer are provided along with the cables, SCART lead and a phono lead for any auxiliary equipment you may want to hook into. A medium-wave aerial loop and FM aerial strand are also provided.

The subwoofer needs it's own power supply, so you will need to have two spare power sockets.

The cables for the speakers are colour coded with the speakers and the outputs from the player. Each speaker is clearly marked as to where it should go, and it's simply a case of matching the colours and you can't go wrong.

After fine-tuning the speakers versus viewing position using the excellent test tone function, it was time to do some serious viewing. I put in a copy of D-Tox, and the Dolby Digital 5.1 output sounded absolutely superb, and the picture quality was excellent.

The MX3800D also has a built-in dts decoder and the sound quality when listening to a dts soundtrack is also superb.

The home cinema system also more than adequately handles sound inputs from digital television receivers and VHS recorders, and some tired old VHS recordings were given (sound wise at least) a welcome boost through using the "Matrix" virtual surround sound setting. Tuner functions are adequate.

The player can also handle audio CDs, both standard and (so-called) enhanced, CD-R and CD-RW along with (not advertised on the box but mentioned in the manual) Video CD and Super VCD.

Did I make the right decision going for home cinema? Damned right.

VHS is dead. Stand-alone players are dying. Long live home cinema.

I was really surprised by the Philips MX3800D when it came to playing CDs: Despite the tiny speakers, the surround sound mode was far superior to the conventional stereo mode, producing a room-filling 3D sound with the performance appearing to come from the front speakers. Together with the back fill from the rear speakers, this gives a concert hall effect for a wide variety of listening positions in the room. The 350W power, including powered sub woofer, is more than adequate for my 4 x 5 m room. The tuner is creditable with stronger FM signals. DVD sound also good. Great value at £320 or so.