A couple of years ago I was living with my grandad and had neither a proper CD player (I was using my laptop to listen to music) or a DVD player (I had a TV from the 80's with no scart connection). I decided that I was fed up with listening to music through terrible laptop speakers and set out to buy something with good sound quality but decided that I might aswell buy a system capable of playing DVD's incase I upgraded my TV at a later point (I did and will be reviewing that too when/if my suggestion goes through on here). Anyway this is what I ended up buying...

The Philips DVD Micro Theatre MCD139B (catchy name!) came top of my comparison list which basically compared the specifications to cost. At the time I bought it, this cost me roughly £100 from Argos.

The player comes with 2 black speakers and a subwoofer (which was a must on my list of requirements as I like to hear good quality bass) and is capable of 100 Watt power output - now when doing research I didn't really know what 100 Watt's was in real terms so I compared it to other similar products on the market and this came pretty near the top (higher watts being better).

Aside from the speakers there is the player itself - this is a silver 'box' with a touch sensitive lid to insert the disc, light up display panel on the front and several control buttons. There is also a remote control which works on infared and can be quite frustrating if you aren't aiming in an exact line as the connection can be hit and miss.

Size wise this is a bit on the large side when you consider all the different components - if this were around 20 years ago it would have been small, but not in this day and age. To give you an idea of size all the parts take up 3/4 of the surface of the chest of drawers in my bedroom.

Good points:
- Stylish appearance - looks like it costs more than it does
- Can be used as a simple hifi player ie. does not have to be connected to a TV and can just be used to play music
- Capable of playing the radio
- Choice of equalisers for different types of music
- Simple instructions for easy set up

Bad points:
- Box it comes in is very large and hard to manouvre - it was very difficult for me to bring this home from town on the bus so if you're buying one I recommend you get it delivered or have a car.
- Lots of irritating and untidy cables, some of which are a bit short and so limit the placement of the components.
- When playing DVD's (but oddly not with CD's) it has a habit of freezing randomly, sometimes refusing to continue playing unless you turn it off and on again - this isn't a problem with the DVD's themselves nor how clean the player is so I don't know why it does it.
- When turned on the power button glows a blue colour which is insanely bright and very distracting.

I probably wouldn't buy this product again due to its reliability issues - I hoped I just had a dodgy machine, but looking online I now find some other people have had similar issues. If they fixed this it would be a great player for the price. Recommended if you're looking primarily for a CD player and don't mind the larger size.