Philips HTS5563 review

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.