A lot of people love the idea of a home theater system but when setting up the speakers they realize that they need to run wires all over the living room to make it work. Companies have tried to solve this problem with a variety of solutions, wireless rear speakers, virtual surround from less than six speakers--but there’s no denying the appeal of recent single-speaker solutions
The Philips HTS8100 SoundBar is one of the newest virtual surround systems with a single speaker plus a subwoofer, and it manages to deliver surround sound with just only one Speaker bar. In all, the HTS8100 comes through on most of its promises. It does a pretty good job of approximating the surround experience, I liked the styling, and it even impressed us with its video quality while upscaling DVDs.
Design: The Philips HTS8100’s look is extremely stylish. The main unit consists of a long, thin speaker system--the SoundBar. For a system this thin, you might be surprised to find out there’s a DVD player packed in there as well; with a tap of the open/close button, the black reflective panel in the middle slides back to reveal a vertically aligned DVD player. The SoundBar can either stand on a table or be mounted on the wall with the included bracket. All in all, it comes close to the ultimate in minimalist home theater. Philips also includes an iPod dock in the package.the HTS8100 comes with both standard Dolby and DTS surround-sound processing. Of course, the HTS8100 doesn’t actually have six discrete speakers, so it uses its own processing to simulate the surround experience from one speaker.
DVD Upscaling: The highest quality connection on the HTS8100 is the HDMI output. It also features DVD upscaling-- means that no matter what the screen size may be the player enhances the quality but that doesn’t mean it will make your DVDs look like high-def.u have to use HDMI compatable Display set and DVDs for that.
Audio: Watching Movies in it is simply awesome. it delivers perfect sound as if the speakers are all over the room. but when it comes to Music it doest sounds great on multi channel mode.The good:Stylish, minimalist design; built-in DVD player concealed behind motorized door; very good video quality on DVDs; four total audio inputs; iPod dock included.The bad:No video inputs; sounds better with movies than with music.
The bottom line:The exceedingly stylish Philips HTS8100 SoundBar packs the home theater experience--including a DVD player--into one slim package plus a sub.