Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVD580HC Home Cinema System

This is my second home cinema system - the first a generic own brand which in itself wasn't bad at all.

Overall impression of the Phillips - very easy to set up, sound quality good, picture exceptional for a budget piece of kit - I was lucky enough to track it down and review it in the flesh first and it compared well to systems costing £600.

I have it set up in quite a small room so the size of the speakers is not a problem, I'm not sure how it would sound in a bigger room - I suspect not as well.

I give it only four stars for two reasons. First, the centre speaker is too small and you need to play around with the balances to get good dialogue (and you don't get any onscreen indication of volume changes while playing a disc which is a little annoying). Second, when left in pause mode the system switches itself off completely after around 10/15 minutes - very annoying if you are fielding a long phone call, you have to go through all the bother of reloading the disc.

But these are two minor criticisms, I would heartily recommend the system.

Bought this on impulse to keep the kids quiet in their TV room - frankly it has transformed the small room into a vibrant home cinema which my wife and I use when the kids have gone to bed. Can only re-iterate the comments about setting the central & rear speakers up others have mentioned - goes against the macho grain guys, but you must read the instruction manual to get them going!

I was really knocked out by how good this little lot sounds. The satellite speakers were worryingly small but they can really chuck out some hefty noise. I've got the DVD player hooked up to a 28" wide screen Philips TV and its visual quality is superb.

This combination is well worth the money, and finally Philips have started making hardware that actually looks good too. Just be aware that the DVD player isn't multi-region, so you'll only be able to use DVDs from European stockists.

This system truly is a great piece of kit.

The player can stand horizontally or vertically for anyone who finds space at a premium, and being 12v DC operated (as well as mains powered), means I can watch DVD movies in my car !

Easy to assemble with plenty of cable for satellite speakers, easy to use, beware of rear speaker setup being accessed through the channels sub menu. Picture does distort after x1.5.
Looks fantastic and sounds superb.