Sylvania NB500SL9 1080p Blu-Ray Player with HDMI Cable: Review and Manual

Just got a Sylvania NB500SL9 1080p Blu-Ray Player. It came with a high quality HDMI Cable, which is still not to be taken for granted. The price was right - $150 at Costco. At this point in time this is an excellent price and this purchase allowed me to cross over into the world of HD movies. Now I don't have to think twice about buying a movie. I just get the Blu-ray version!

Even on a 1080i Sharp SH12U the picture quality is truly impressive and better than I used to get from simple upconverting of regular DVDs. One particular feature I like a lot is noise reduction which can improve the quality of old grainy footage. But don't over do it! Shrek's skin can easily become smooth as a baby's bottom with very low level noise reduction.

It takes a little bit of time to load the BD videos. My guess is that this is caused by the heavy bandwidth requirements of Blu-ray DVDs and I expect that probably even better models have some issues in this area. I was able to connect the coaxial digital audio to my Philips HTS3544 home theater with great results.

One thing that this player was unable to do is play PAL DVDs (regardless of the zone). Not a very big problem for me, because I have other options and don't realy have a lot of PAL movies.

Sylvania NB500SL9 1080p Blu-Ray Player

Philips HTS3544 home theater and the iPod dock

Here is one feature that may seem insignificant to someone, but for me, as an avid iPod user, it is quite important. Whenever I plug in my iPod to the computer with a USB cord (to charge, to update or to simply play the content) the iPod "forgets" the exact place where it was before the connection had been established. This is quite a nuisance, because I often listen to audio books and long podcasts, so it is difficult to find the exact location in the mp3 file. Now, when I put my iPod on the cradle of my Philips HTS3544 home theater not only it resumes playback from the exact place where I paused it, it retains the location after it's disconnected. It seems that the implementation of hardware connections is different in my home theater system. This might be something to consider when you are buying a home theater.

See also:
Home media room design

Philips HTS3544 power problem

Problem
I have heard before that Philips HTS3544 can experience some sort of power problem, but I was yet to encounter it. So, it happened! Came home from a brief trip and the unit would not turn on. The red indicator was red, but the receiver was not responsive to either the power button or the remote. Two factors may have contributed to this:

• There was a power outage the day before I left. I did not turn on the HTS3544 since.
• I turned off the entire array of electronics with a master switch, so the unit did not have power for three days.

Solution
I unplugged the home theater for about 5 seconds, waited for the red light to go off, and then plugged it back in. It worked just fine. I assume that a bunch of settings were lost, but at least I can watch DVD again!

What puts 'home theater' into 'home theater system'?

A little bit of semantics, the way I see it. After I installed Philips HTS3544 one thing became quite clear to me. Yes, I do love the sound, the woofers and all. But I understood that the HTS3544 (or what have you) is only the 'system' and the home theater is the actual space where you install it. In other words, the room where you install the unit has to mimic a real theater. This includes, the space, the furniture, the light. This is what I mean when I say that the system only properly refers to what you get out of the box. No more, no less. Without it you will definitely not have a theater experience. With it, but without the actual theater part taken care of - it just will not be the same. The biggest problem in my case now is that I just don't have enough room to put the rear speakers where they belong - in the back of the room, so that they are located behind me. So, for me this true home theater thing is something clearly in the future, which makes it all the more fun to be planning for it. So, I will be collecting pictures of setups that other people have, in hopes that this will eventually inspire me.

See also:
Home media room design

Can't listen to AM radio on my Philips HTS3544!

That's right. AM radio stations disappeared. I cannot tune in to a single one now. I don't understand how this can happen. I believe, the antenna for AM reception is inside the unit. Maybe, using an external antenna would help. FM reception still works just fine. I am quite puzzled. Naturally, once you can no longer to listen to AM radio, AM radio is precisely what you want to listen to all day long. It's just human nature! Frustrating.

A problem with Philips HTS3544

As I watched "The Tudors" last night on DVD, I was wondering why on earth they decided to shoot Episode VIII in full screen format, as opposed to wide 16:9. Turns out, the settings on my Philips HTS3544 became reset for no good reason. I had to change the setting for the output TV from 4:3 to 16:9. I only got around to changing a few other settings that I had previously customized. At least I did not have to worry about surround sound speaker placement with speakers mysteriously jumping from place to place. But my volume settings for each channel became reset as well. Sure hope it does not happen again!

Audio lag problems unnoticed before

Here is an odd thing. Ever since I have installed my Philips HTS3544 and discovered that the digital audio from TV broadcasts needs to be synced with the video I started to notice that the audio lag is present in many programs even when I simply view them on my Sharp SH12U. Even on the analog channels! There is a chance that somehow this is a problem with the television, but I don't think so. Apparently, home theaters really amplify, so to speak, the lagging by channeling the sound through surround speakers.

Audio lag fixed. Sort of.

I find the documentation for my home theater a little confusing. Nevertheless, I discovered that I just have to press the Audio Sync button on the remote and then use the volume control on the remote to change the delay value. Here is something important that I can no longer verify. It seems as if this value is set to something other than 0 (zero) by default. Probably 100, right in the middle. Therefore when you first connect the TV or whatever other digital input you have there is a lag. I pretty much had to set it to 0 to get good syncing. It is still not perfect, however. And I hope I don't have to adjust it again.

HDMI cable - cheap and dirty

My Sharp LCD does is only a 26 inch unit, so I do not really gain much in terms of quality because of using the upconversion feature in the home theater. However, it was nice to get rid of a bunch of wires!

It has been noted by many that retail stores are running a very successful scam, selling HDMI cables for no less that $30-$40. I got mine at Buy.com. It's a 6 inch Belkin cable, which means that I still managed to get a decent brand. It only cost me ten bucks. It works perfectly. I just cannot yet figure out why I don't have an easy way to disable the sound input from the home theater to the television. After all, the home theater is perfectly capable of rendering the sound using its own speakers!

Regardless, this is a total 'buyer beware'. Do not pay $50 or so for a cable that you can get for $10 or $20. It's just wrong!

Digital audio sync problem

This is not necessarily a problem with my HTS3544, but this issue somewhat limits the use for digital audio inputs - the video signal is not synced with the digital audio. My Philips home theater has a sync setting, but I am not sure if it is only meant to be active while playing DVDs. I think that the TV should have some syncing mechanism. What's worse, it appears that the amount of correction needed changes from time to time. In my experience, the video and audio became so out of sync that I had to eventually resort to using my TV's speakers.

Philips HTS3544 home theater

And finally the quest is over! I have a home theater. Philips HTS3544! The manual is both for Philips HTS3544 and HTS3555. I have not idea what the difference between the models is. I connected the digital audio out from my TV. Bear in mind, that digital out is only possible for digital channels. This means that I get true Dolby sound for a good number of channels.

The sound is amazing. I never really care as much about sound, but this is the kind of thing that when you get it, it's difficult to go without it. My concern was that it would be too loud, but the sound is spread over all the channels, so when you close the door in the room not much of it escapes, while inside you have a real theatric experience. For $159 at Target, not bad at all! There is no hissing or anything unpleasant about the sound.


You can really watch all the movies you have with a totally different feeling. HTS3544 is also quite slim, it does not look like an antiquated piece of equipment. There is an iPod dock which can also be used for some Philips mp3 player I never heard of (GoGear). You can control the functions of the iPod and if you connect the dock to the television with a video cable you can watch pictures or videos on the screen. I actually was not able to achieve that, because I don't have a single picture on my iPod. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be possible to view iPod's menus on the TV screen.

There is an MP3 port and I was able to get excellent sound from it. The only complaint is that the button on the remote toggles between AUX and Digital In. Takes a few seconds to switch from one to the other.

There is one valuable option. You can indicate whether your TV is NTSC or multi-system. I have a bunch of PAL DVDs. My old DVD recorder (also a Philips) could play them, but the TV was unable to display them properly. A TVs problem, primarily, but very inconvenient.

I ordered a Belkin HDMI cable from Buy.com for $10. When I get it I will be able to test upconversion. I cannot emphasize it enough that you do not have to pay $40-$60 for a cable at your local BestBuy or what have you. This is just a total scam. For a short cable you don't even have to have a real brand. I got a 6 inch Belkin, so this should be just fine.

One thing I have to try is playback of DivX disks.

So far, I was unable to make my Philips universal remote to work with this home theater... I was hoping that Philips products would work together...