Philips Soundbar HTS8140

Performance and Verdict
As is the ritual with any DVD player, we inserted two test DVDs: the DVE and HQV test DVDs. I was admittedly a bit suspicious about the performance of this stylish unit, maybe due to the adage of style and performance not getting along. I connected via HDMI to a nice Samsung Plasma (review coming up soon) and set the upscaling to be done by the Philips itself, thus being able to see the full processing capabilities of the Soundbar.

Speaking of visuals, I can conclude that the output is high on color accuracy. Best of all, the colors are accurate and neutral, leaving a lot to play on the TV. Color banding, a problem that arises due to bad DVD players, was not an issue here. Detail in rendering the upscaled video also was good, but far from spectacular. Discerning eyes will notice jaggies and aliasing.

Coming to sound, while watching I Am Legend, the low growls thumped out with vigor from the subwoofer, as did most loud sound effects. The sub handles tightly, and that's what creates a good movie watching experience. In the realm of stereo music the sound was not the best, with sharper mid-range and brightness in the highs that scuttled any comparison with real speakers.

Then again, these are not floorstanding speakers; the idea is to create surround sound from the front position. This it did very well, on the DVD Dolby 5.1 audio tracks. I also played a MPEG 4 file of Shrek 3 with a 5.1 AAC track, which played fine. The surround sound is quite cool – one can’t really tell the difference from a normal five-speaker set.

Conclusion
At Rs 56,000 the Soundbar HTS8140 is not exactly meant for the budget-conscious, but then it’s a high-end unit in terms of design. Movies and games are its specialty. It has a number of inputs for sound, and the overall frequency response is perfect for movies. Music lovers will not warm to it though. The design is extremely impressive, so anyone passionate about style should take a look.