PHILIPS LX8000SA DVD / SACD Home Entertainment System

Rating:
Summary: Pleasantly Surprised
Review: I have to say that I bought the Philips LX8000 somewhat against my will. My wife wouldn't allow me to put a full size home cinema system into the living room... So I started looking around at the more discreet slimline offerings and came across the Philips.
I really liked the styling and decided to buy without actually hearing it (risky...).
The sound is actually very good. The bass woofer does a marvelous job filling the room with fast deep bass and combiness very well with the small front and rears (it's only when it's switched off that you realise the fantastic job it does as the f & r's offer no bass tones at all, yet together they sound great). The centre speaker offers good, clear vocals too.
My only gripe is that there is no graphic equaliser, just some presets - rock, classical, jazz etc... This can often lead to the rears producing some very tinny, high pitched sounds (very annoying) and when changing mode to, say, "classical", you can get a very flat sound.
That apart most of the time the quality is great. Loud, spacy yet tight sound which loves high volume. Action movies are especially good.
It's also great for playing music and handles MP3's, SACD's as well as ordinary CD's very well.
The fact that you can watch your normal TV programs or Videos in Dolby Pro Logic surround sound, listen to AM/FM radio, play music CD's/Super Audio CD's as well as MP3 CD's all from the one box shows just how flexible a system this is for the money.
A great buy.