Philips HTS5563 review

Philips produces several all-in-one home cinema systems, but the HTS5563 is one of its best. It’s a 5.1 surround sound system with 3D Blu-ray playback, Smart TV functions and local media streaming. It should look great wherever you put it thanks to its industrial-looking silver speaker grilles.

Each satellite has a single speaker driver inside it, but we were expecting good things from its claimed 1,000W of amplification. It’s well equipped for anyone with additional set-top boxes or games consoles, as it has two HDMI inputs and a single HDMI output that supports Audio Return Channel, but it only has one composite video output for legacy devices. Audio support’s better, with optical and coaxial S/PDIF inputs, and a stereo pair of analogue RCA phono inputs.

It’s a shame that Wi-Fi isn’t integrated given the price of the system. You must run an Ethernet cable from your router to the TV to get online or buy the optional wireless dongle (Philips WUB1110/00 WiFi Dongle, £40 from Pixmania.co.uk). The SD card reader is also reserved for BD-Live content, rather than playback.

Once connected to the internet, you can stream content from a networked PC or NAS device. Our test files played perfectly, so you should have no trouble finding file formats that work. You can also play files locally using the front-facing USB port.

Philips also includes the latest version of its NetTV online portal, although the experience is basic at best. Beyond YouTube video streaming and Box Office 365 on-demand films, you get Facebook and Twitter, a web browser and Napster music downloads. The other apps are from minor companies, and the additional app store currently has nine other applications available to download, including two that ‘celebrate the female form’. If you already own a Smart TV you’re unlikely to find anything of major interest here.

The system as a whole is very easy to use, having an icon-based menu system that’s sensibly laid out and well labelled. Unfortunately, the settings menus are fairly basic, with limited picture and sound quality settings. Sadly, we couldn’t find a way to tweak picture quality while watching a DVD, which meant we had to return to the main menu and make adjustments blindly. Upscaling produces an overly smoothed image, reducing the appearance of noise but also losing some detail. We had to resort to the User mode to reduce its effects. Blu-ray discs fared much better. Detail and colours were preserved at the default picture settings, with room to tweak noise reduction and image sharpness using the picture menu.

We were initially impressed with the audio quality, with films producing clear speech from the centre speaker and a well-rounded sense of surround sound, but we quickly noticed that this was only true when the volume was within 10 per cent of maximum. Any lower and the punchy audio lost much of its presence, quickly losing bass and making it difficult to hear speech. Admittedly, there was little sign of distortion at the maximum volume, but even this setting wasn’t quite as loud as other all-in-ones we’ve seen.

Although it’s well suited to anyone owning several other set-top boxes or games consoles, the HTGS5563 has a weak Smart TV selection and its volume is distinctly average. Although we couldn’t criticise sound quality too dramatically, its appeal is still limited to those with a large living room, as it simply won’t fill the space.