Ever since Pioneer decided to kill off its stunningly beautiful Kuro plasma lineup, they’ve focussed their energy on audio. Well, audio and design, judging by their latest line up of Blu-ray home theatre in a box solutions. More »
According to our poll “Do You Have a Surround Sound Setup,” 76% of the total respondents had either a HTIB or a system they compiled from separate components. That beats virtual surround respondents nearly 11 to 1. More »
You have to give it to Akai here. When they say, all-in-one, they really mean it. More »
Surround sound is awesome, but how many people actually use it? Is it true surround sound or virtual surround sound? Is the system hooked up correctly? Let’s find out. More »
I’m actually really drawn to the design of LG’s new Blu-ray Home Theatre in a Box solution. Maybe I’m just a sucker for stylish curves, but I think I’d consider buying this if I didn’t already own a Blu-ray player and a kick-ass receiver… More »
Yamaha has refreshed their entire home theatre in a box (HDIB) line with the YHT-791 ($US850), YHT-591 ($US650), YHT-491 ($US550) and YHT-391 ($US450). Here’s a quick summary of the systems:
The SC-BT300 is Panasonic’s new golden boy home theatre system, and the powerful BD-Live system might actually be featurey enough to tempt you away from those sacred standalone components.
This isn’t the first Home Theatre in a Box solution we’ve seen that comes with a bundled Blu-ray player, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an extremely exciting piece of kit. It’s got speakers and a Blu-ray player and everything, plus it all comes in a box. Isn’t that awesome? To be fair, the 5.1 system looks the goods, and for the $1099 price tag (plus $100 cash back), it’s a pretty good way of upgrading to Blu-ray and a surround sound setup. The HT-BD2ET’s small bookshelf speakers reportedly offer 800 Watts RMS, which is pretty impressive for such a small set of speakers. And the Blu-ray player supports 24 frame playback and the HD audio codecs, although there’s no ethernet connectivity for BD-Live action. But if you’re going to buy a HTiB setup, that probably won’t be a dealbreaker anyway…
SE2 Labs let us have a look at the ITC One, an integrated movie, TV, gaming and music system announced last year. The all-in-one approach purports to simplify setting up a high-end home entertainment system easier by cramming everything you could imagine into an expensive box. The concept is interesting, but so is the US$25,000 price. The system is beautifully assembled and impressively spec’d, but unless you’ve got that kind of money just floating around and don’t know what Blu-ray discs are, this probably isn’t for you.
