Philips HTS6515 review

Sound quality was also excellent. Although the subwoofer is physically quite large, the sound it produces is actually restrained and tight. There is no flabbiness in the low-end response and watching dinosaur attacks was a deeply satisfying experience. T-Rex made an appropriately terrifying noise upon his escape, without any hint of distortion.

We were also very surprised by the depth of the Ambisound system. Philips claims that you can create quite a nice, wide sound field from just two speakers -- each speaker contains three full-range woofers -- and we have to say we agree with them.

We paid careful attention to the sound of rain and thunder in Jurassic Park, and the effect was incredible. We truly felt there was rain falling everywhere, and thunder cut across the room in a remarkable way. For a three-speaker system, this really was a much more involving sound than we're used to from such set-ups.

Using the system is very easy indeed. There is no particularly complex set-up process, although you'll need to be happy plugging a few cables in and possibly wall-mounting the DVD unit. Aside from that, you could be up and running in just minutes and have a very nice looking, high-quality DVD and sound system.

Conclusion
We think £300 is a bit steep for the HTS6515, but it performs well, and if you want a good quality DVD upscaler and decent 'virtual' surround sound system, we think this is one of the best we’ve seen.

In terms of 2.1 systems, we like the Onkyo HTX-22HD, but it doesn't include a DVD player and costs nearly as much as this Philips system. It does, on the other hand, offer more flexibility with outputs for a full 5.1 speaker system, if you want to upgrade in the future. We also like the Onkyo LS-V501 but at £100 more than the Philips, we don't think it will appeal to this part of the market.