Customer Reviews

Philips HTS3400D/37 Home Theater System with DVD Player

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

A friend of mine bought this system for his beach-house, and though I was skeptical at first it really surprised me given the pricetag.

This little unit is every bit as compact and pretty as Bose, but actually sounds the same or better! I was very leery of the tiny subwoofer (I have a big 55lb. twelve inch Mirage sub at home that I love) but it actually was not bad at all...CERTAINLY much better than those pathetic Bose "bass modules" (they can't call it a "subwoofer" because it's not) which only puts out fuzzy boomy half-baked mid-bass.

Having said that, bear in mind that no satellite system at ANY cost (the Mirage Omnisats and Orb Audio units do come close though) can match the sound quality of decent bookshelf speakers (from an Athena AS-B1 to Ascend CBM-170s). Sure it's still much better than your TV's speakers...but God help you if you plan to listen to music on these teensy weensy little sats, unless it's very casual/background listening at moderate volume levels. Make no mistake: the only reason to go with a Home Theater In A Box satellite system is price, compactness, price, and compactness.

The first time I saw this piece was at Wal-mart. I had listened to Sony,Philips, JVC, Panasonic, RCA in that order, the difference was instantly clear. Then I went back to listen to the Philips again and the difference was clear.I recommend that first time buyers should go to a store with several brands on display that they could listen to. I made up my mind that if I wanted a home theater in a box (HTIB)package it will be the Philips brand.This was about 10 months ago. Each time I stopped by the electronic section of any store I would check it out. Finally, I decided to buy one. Next thing was to read expert reviews and consumer reviews. Most reviews rated it high. However, I was concerned about the hissing sound some consumers had experienced.I still went ahead to buy one at Fred Meyer for $179:00 on sale, if I did not like it, I will return it, I reasoned. I bought the black colored piece. Costco and Radioshack had it on sale for the same price but Fred Meyer is closer to my home.
Since adding this piece to our family room, the audio effects in our family room is certainly more welcoming, warmer , richer and entertaining than before.
I will address the concerns of a few reviews here.
1. Hissing sound: I found none, but discovered that if the audio OUT on your TV has one jacket like mine, instead of two or three jackets, then you need to get an extension RCA jacket that will split your one outlet to two or three OUT jackets with the apporpriate color codes (white, red (for two jackets) and yellow for the third jacket) to match the audio IN jacket (white and red) of the DVD player, otherwise you will get either a humming or hissing sound. Please note that the key here is to have the color codes on your TV audio OUT,to match the color codes on your Philips DVD audio IN otherwise you will get a humming or hissing sound.

2. DVD player jumping disc: You are using a defective disc. solution: change your disc.

3. Back speakers not working: They will not work if you do not use the remote control to adjust the surround and sound buttons to the appropriate mode e.g. movie , stereo etc. Sometimes, some movies are not recorded to produce surround sound effect, so change the TV channel or your DVD disc.

4. Speaker wires not long enough:Some consumers had enough length, mine were too short for our large family room (too large for me to bother to measure). One reviewer was able to use banana plugs to make the adaptation,I could not. So I returned the banana plugs, I bought from Home depot. Instead, I bought some digital extension cables. They come in different sizes 14G,16G,18G,20G etc. The smaller the size number, the thicker the cable, the better, to avoid loss of digital signals. I bought size 14G. The risk with attaching extension cables is that since you will have to cut into the original cables that come with the equipment you can not return your equipment to the store nor sell it at ebay for a good price if you wanted to,since it will be considered tampered with. But be reassured you will not need to dispose of this equipment once you have it properly set up.If you decide to use additional extension cable/wire, cut the orginal wire at about 6 inches from the speakers. Attach your extention cable to this cut end and run the attached extension cable from your speaker location to where your equipment is.Then attach the other end of your extension cable to the other end of the original cable, so you can still use the proprietary speaker plugs that came with your equipment to attach to the back of the set.This method makes it cosmetically suitable to have one cable (i.e. the extension) run through your entire room and at the same time use the the proprietary plugs attached to the orginal cable at the other end with your equipment, which by the way is the only plug that fits into the jackets at the back of the DVD player/receiver.REMEMBER to tape over all exposed wires/cables with nonconductive electric tape. Normally, comes in black.
Caution: you need to buy enough length of extension cable though, they come in 25ft, 50ft and 100ft length. Having a large room I bought three 50 feet cables to do the job satisfactorily.The cost for each 50 ft cable was $19:00.

5. Wall mountings:The enclosed wall mountings are fixed. You can not rotate the position of your speakers once mounted. For less than $15:00 at Wal-mart , I bought a set of 5 speakers wall mounts that I can rotate from side to side or move up and down to a suitable head angle.

Speaking of the sound production, it is clear, crisp and true theater realism. The sonics can not be described justily unless you hear it for your self.Do your self a favor and buy one.

But for the proprietary plugs that make it difficult to consider using extension cables , I would have given it 5 stars. Philips should make the plugs universally adaptable, so consumers wil not have second thoughts about adding extension cables, if they needed to. Better still, Philips could add more length to the cables or make provisions for one to order fitting extension cables through them so you do not have to cut into the original cables.

I was looking for a DVD player for my bedroom at Costco and couldn't resist the $179 price for this brand new Philips HTS3400 (HTS3410 is the same except that it comes all in silver rather than silver/black).
I played some DVDs and CDs and after 2 days i decided to return it for 2 reasons:
1. It makes a hissing sound when it's turned off. Now, it wouldn't bother me too much in a basement (althought it would still be anoying), but it's a definite NO NO in the bedroom.
2. Rear speakers are almost silent no matter how much you increase the volume to them.

If you don't mind these 2 things, then by all means go for it.

UPDATE:
Having nothing better to do, I went and purchased another unit from Costco to see if indeed I have a bad unit or it's a design/manufacturing issue.
Surprise surprise...second unit makes the same exact noise only a bit louder!
Curious enough (i'm a mechanical engineer with some knowledge of electronics) i open the unit to see where is this noise coming from. It is the AC/DC transformer, more specific two 330uF capacitors making this noise.
That is really poor design and/or low quality components!!! I did not expect this from a brand name like Philips. This is no different than any no name units out there at half price.

As a result I am changing my initial reivew and recommend that you look for a different product, this one is definately not worth the money. I cannot update the stars but this time I would rate it with 0 stars.

I purchased this unit at Walmart for $189.00. Knowing absolutely nothing about home theater systems, I was a little wary of what I was getting myself into. I originally wanted a system without a DVD player, since I already own one. However, after listening to the system at Walmart -- and because the RCA unit I really wanted was sold out -- I thought "what the heck" and went ahead and bought it. I also purchased an S-video cable on the advice of the sales clerk, which turned out to be a good decision.

My units is the black one. The system was fairy easy to set up, even for a novice like me. I managed to get it wrong a few times, but after some experimentation (mainly with my cable box) I finally got all the cables in the right places -- and presto! I had a great-sounding home theater system.

My living room is about 20 X 18, and this unit fills it up nicely with solid lows and even highs. I have NOT experienced any hissing as another reviewer wrote about -- I wonder if he may have wired it incorrectly?

The downside to this system, like most in this price range, is that you're stuck with the wires Philips gives you. Their permanently fixed in the speakers, which makes upgrading wires difficult. Also, the subwoofer is passive -- so you can't control in separately other than with the remote. But it sounds great in my opinion.

I have digital cable, and am very pleased with how this system interprets the music stations. The system "maxes out" when the volume hits 40, and for a 700-watt system, it doesn't get as loud as I would have expected, bit it's still loud enough to impress friends and annoy the neighbors. I slid Star Wars Episode 3 in the DVS drive, and I was blown away. It sounds great, producing a deep rumbling bass and clear vocals. (R2D2 has his own speaker, the left rear one).

All in all, this is a great system for the price. My thought was to upgrade to a more expensive unit when I get my tax refund, but I've reconsidered. The HTS3400D suits me just fine.

Bought from costco for $179.99. Good enough for my bedroom. And I did not hear the hissing sound previous reviewer mentioned, I believe it must be something related at his/her home.

I wish the technical support Philips offers was better! It is pathetic!!

Bought System I from Target and wired it up. Fantastic sound but the progressive scan pic was red. Called up Philips service but the bloke had no clue. Returend the system thinking it was defective. Enter system II - Panasonic - pathetic sound but good pic. Not so simple to wire. Returned this too! Enter system III - Philips again - red pic again - but this time I was sure that there has to be something wrong with the settings to have 2 sets with the same problem so drilled into the settings and finally got the system working!

This system is good value for money indeed!

The successors of this babe sound even better and some of them do the 1080i upconversion too at the same price as this model was selling for once upon a time.

It might also be worth noting here that with some experimentation, I was able to set up this unit and since about 2 years now, this unit has been working fine with just the lens requiring regular cleaning.
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Opted for this system as this was the only one that didn't hurt my pocked and my wife! Surprise... the sound felt like a real theater... the thrill didn't last too long as the progressive scan output wouldn't work! Had to return the unit to Target. Got a Panasonic but the stuff sucks... sound doesn't compare... now hoping to go to Walmart and geting hold of another Philips. Hope I am lucky this time!

Sound quality is amazing, but...

For city dwellers there is a catch - system does not have a plug for headphones - so there is no way to see the movie while child is going to bed in the next room.

Another annoying feature is slowness of DVD drive - it opens/closes/loads disk really slow - much slower then say famous Philips 642 DVD player.

I had read some other reviews stating that this Home Theater System makes a buzzing noise. However, I had my doubts so I ordered it anyway and it's great. No buzzing noise on mine at all. I have an apartment and didn't really want to spend a whole lot of coin on a major system that I couldn't really use anyway because of noise restrictions. This system is nice and clear and gives me the Home Theater Experience I was looking for. They give you plenty of wire to run along the edge of a room and still have enough slack to hang the rear speakers up behind the couch on the wall. Granted the speaker wire isn't all that thick, and has a proprietary male/female connector into the unit which would make upgrading to monster cable a pain. It still sounds great and for under $200 bucks why would you care anyway.

We own the HTS3400 bought at Costco. It is possible that the newer "D" model has fixed the hissing we hear during stand-by mode. We have owned it about a year now and I believe it is getting louder. When the house is quiet I can hear it in the next room. It doesn't bother my wife; she finds it restful. I don't like it because I don't think it should be making any sound at all. Given the choice I would NOT buy this product again.

** Update** This player only lasted a couple years. Now it is trash.