I had it up and connected to my wifi network in minutes, although that was more through luck than from reading the instructions! Some people report that it is quite fiddly to set up, but I didn't think so.
I plugged it in, selected internet radio, and it showed the available networks. I selected my network and it asks for the WEP key. Once that is input, you don't have to enter it again. Note that the instructions tell you to register on the philips website before connecting to the internet- this is not correct. If you do this you will have problems.
It then asked me for my email address and to choose a password, which I entered. You then get an activation email from philips. This enables you to access internet radio. Again, once this is entered, you never have to input it again.
The Philips internet radio system is based on
www.vtuner.com, so any station that you find on there will be available on the MCI500H. It claims that there are 11,000 stations available, so virtually any station you can imagine would be on there. In the unlikely even you find a station that that is not listed, you can add it manually via the philips website anyway.
One thing I would say is that the philips website is a bit rubbish, and it can be difficult to find radio stations in the list. On occasions, i have added stations manually because I couldn't find them in the list, only to find that they were in fact already there! One tip is that it is much easier to find the station on Vtuner first, note the category its in (eg Europe/UK/Dance), and then look for it in that category on the unit itself.
The sound is as good as any Hi-Fi I've ever owned- obviously I don't know what youre used to but my previous Hi-Fi was an Aiwa mini system, so I can only compare it to that. One niggle is that the speakers have non standard plugs on the wires, so if you want to use your own speakers you will have to cut the plugs off and rewire them. Their should be no need to do this though as the philips speakers are fine. My lounge is 20ft by 12ft and it sounds fine in there. Nice and bassy, and plenty of adjustment of bass and treble. Although not a traditional graphic 5 band graphic equalizer as such, there are different preset settings for Rock, Pop, Classic etc in addition to the separate bass and treble adjustment.
One other thing is that it has Gracenote database built in, so when you play music it is *supposed* to show you a colour picture of the CD cover on the display. However, the Gracenote database is notoriously inaccurate and most of the time it will show either the wrong cover or no cover at all!
Remote control is fine, although if youre scrolling through tracks on the HDD, or searching for an internet radio station, you will need to stand close enough to read whats actually written on the LCD screen as its only about a 3" display.
I've noticed that the MCI500H seems to get mixed reviews online, but all I can say is that it has been fine so far for me. There is a support forum for this product at
www.streamiumcafe.com (click on "products and user resources"). It mainly seems to be owners helping each other out though, rather than philips themselves actually helping.
Theres a gadget show review of it here, although I don't necessarily agree with everything he says about it, especially when he says that the sound won't rival a micro hifi system, and that you should look elswhere if you want good sound quality. All I can think is that he must have used the unit with the default equalizer settings. If he had fiddled around with the EQ settings and bass/treble i'm sure he wouldnt have said this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsB30a5NtGQ