Key bullet-points on Philips' latest high-def-friendly home-cinema system, the £700 Cineos HTS9800W, take in wall-mountable 'wireless' flat-panel rear speakers, Dolby Digital EX 6.1 surround-sound processing, HDMI output (paired with 720p/1080i video upscaling) and an impressive 800WRMS of sound.
At its heart the HTS9800W has an ultra-slim, B&O-alike touch-controlled system box and that can be wall-mounted, too. This features RDS FM radio and a slot-loading DVD player with 5.1 Super Audio CD playback and is accompanied by a multi-function IR handset.
The DVD player also looks able to handle a decent selection of additional video and audio optical discs and formats - DVD+/-R/RW, S-VCD, VCD, MPEG-4, CD-R/RW, MP3, WMA/MP3-CD and JPEG CD.
In case you were wondering - the wireless rear speakers aren't actually wireless at all. They have to be cabled up to a receiver box and it's that box that brings in the system's wireless transmissions, cutting out any cable runs from the front of the room to the back.
Philips says that the HTS9800W is the winner of "a prestigious 2006 CES Innovation Award" but we're left a little bemused when we look at the complete feature-set and see some absentees that the awards-committee at a European show might, perhaps, have noticed.
The company could argue, of course, that you can't cram in everything - and that it wasn't practical to do so at a £700 price-point with a system box that's so very slim.
But, even while acknowledging the presence of a bunch of other good stuff - notably progressive component video output, RGB Scart output, digital coaxial input and decoders for Dolby Digital EX, DTS and Dolby Pro Logic II - we were a bit surprised to see no mention of DVD-recording or even any DAB-radio capability.
Check out the full spec on the HTS9800W's home page and let us know in this thread in the HEXUS.community whether you think Philips is actually trying to shortchange anyone or if we're just being unreasonably cynical about what it should be delivering for £700.
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Philips - HTS9800W home page
