Category: Home cinema
Sony shows off new home cinema systems
Sony has launched a range of home cinema systems in time for the holidays, so if you’ve got a bit of money to spare and want an all-in-one package, these are worth considering.
First up is the HTP-BD3iS, which combines Sony’s BDP-S350 Blu-ray player and HT-IS100 5.1-channel surround sound system that features subwoofer, powerful S-Master digital amplification, surround sound processing, and automatic audio calibration…
Onkyo announces PR-SC886 home cinema amplifier
This is the PR-SC886, Onkyo’s new 7.1 surround home cinema pre-amp. It’s got balanced audio-out, onboard decoding of every HD audio format, and something called ISF Video Calibration, which will bump up your picture quality by doing all the image calibration within the amp, rather than in your telly. No more changing aspect ratios through horrible menus whenever you change sources.
It’ll also upscale anything you throw at it to 1080p, and gives you every input and output you could ever wish for. The best bit of the press release is this, though: “Onkyo strongly recommends that an ISF-certified calibration technician be employed to achieve optimal image quality for each of the video inputs”. In other words – “this AV amp is better than you”.
It’s yours for £1500, in black or silver. Don’t forget to add the price of that technician onto the cost. You don’t want substandard image quality with you doing it yourself, do you?
Related posts: Onkyo launches first Blu-ray player: DV-BD606 | Onkyo launches top-of-range TX-SR876 and TX-NR906 receivers
Denon DVD-A1UD high-end universal Blu-ray player
Okay, I’ll have to admit I asked for this a bit. In my last post about Denon Blu-ray players I demanded to know what Denon would describe as ‘high-end’, after their ‘entry-level’ player cost £600.
Well, this is it. It’s the catchily-named DVD-A1UD, and it’ll play back Blu-ray discs, Super Audio CD (SACD), DVD-Audio, DVD-Video and plain old CDs. The DVD-A1UD is the replacement for the Denon’s previous universal DVD player – the DVD-A1XV. Full specs are over the jump.
It costs a massive £3,300. I can safely say that I don’t know anyone who’d splash out £3,300 on a DVD player, but someone must, or they wouldn’t make the damn thing. It’s going to show up across Europe in March 2009, in either a silver or black finish. Who knows, perhaps by then you’ll be rolling around in pots of money. Denon can only hope.
Odeon brings IMAX digital to Europe – the future of cinema has arrived
Odeon cinemas has teamed up with IMAX to build the first IMAX digital theatres in Europe. They’ll open for business in Wimbledon and Greenwich today, but that didn’t stop me having a sneaky look yesterday morning at what we can expect from cinema 2.0….
Acer intros S1200 HD-capable video projector
Acer may not be the first name you think of when it comes to home cinema, but for a bit of business use and some sneaky Wii gaming, the S1200 could be a decent bit of kit.
This DLP-based projector features Acer’s ColorBoost II technology for enhanced colours and picture quality, and has a brightness of 2,500 ANSI lumens and 2,000:1 contrast ratio. It can also push out up to 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, so it won’t do a terrible job of high definition content…
Medion brings 1TB of storage to the budget end of the market with its AKOYA P7300D
The MEDION AKOYA P7300D is a bit of a beast. It packs in a 2.33GHz Intel Q8200 Core 2 Quad processor, Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit edition, a more-than-even-Vista-needs 4GB of DDR II SDRAM RAM and a 1TB hard drive.
Those BIG, MACHO NUMBERS are made to look even bigger by the AKOYA’s relatively tiny price of just £499.99. It’ll only be available at budget imported German baked beans shifter Aldi, appropriately enough, where it launches on November 27…
Emtec S800 HDD Movie Cube – an all-in-one digital media set-top-box
If you want to pump your television viewing experience up to the next level, you might be considering some sort of PVR, or set top box. It’s called a Movie Cube, but I’ve no idea why, because as you can see in the picture above, it’s clearly not a cube. Still, I can overlook that because the specs are surprisingly impressive.
It contains a 500GB hard drive, which will hold 600 or so feature-length movies. It’ll record TV, like a PVR, as well as convert your old videos and DVDs into digital formats – useful for people who don’t like maintaining a vast library of DVDs.
Best of all, it’s networkable, with Ethernet and Wi-Fi built it. That means you’ll be able to stream your content over the network from your Windows or Mac computer. You’ll be able to enjoy all those episodes of Heroes that you’ve downloaded off Bittorrent on your big-screen TV, rather than your little laptop screen.
In terms of formats, it’ll play back MPEG, DivX, XviD, MP3, WAV, and JPG. It’s got a lil’ screen on the front in case you’re streaming stuff to a stereo without your TV on. It’ll upscale video to 720p, has extensive subtitle support, even on DivX files, and has upgradable firmware. All-in-all, a tremendously useful little box.
I’m getting one in for a proper review, so keep an eye out for that. If you’re convinced just by the above, however, then it’ll be available to buy from Dixons in December. It’ll cost £230. Seems, on paper, to be a decent price for a decent device. I’m looking forward to playing with it in person.
Emtec
Related posts: Emtec Gdium Liberty 1000 – a netbook with an OS on a stick | Emtec launches Movie Cube-R multimedia centre
Vuzix announces widescreen virtual reality glasses
Following on from the VR920s, which I reviewed earlier in the year, Vuzix has just announced a pair of widescreen multimedia glasses – the AV310. Like the others, they sit on your nose, and position two dinky screens in front of your eyes, so it’s like having a massive screen further away. They’ve also announced an upgrade to the AV230XL – their entry level goggles – which upgrades them to OLED displays.
The AV310 is the first commercially available video headset available in widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio. It ships with a cable for connecting to your iPod or iPhone, as well as a variety of other devices with TV-Out functionality, including many recent MP3 players. The OLED displays on the AV230XL – and I got to see these myself – look phenomenal. Far brighter and more responsive than LCD displays. Very impressive.
Marantz offers the SR6003 – a seven-channel AV reciever
This lovely-looking black box is the Marantz SR6003. It’s a home cinema reciever, so you basically plug a load of random stuff in at the back, and it sorts it all out for you. It’s real selling point, however, isn’t the seven AV channels, or the backlit, programmable remote, or the sound-enhancing MDAX system.
Nor is it the shallow design, 1080p upscaling, multi-room features or HD audio capabilities. No – the real star of this device, say Marantz, is the 256-colour GUI. It means that it’s a piece of cake to set up, program and connect all your miscellaneous equipment, and have it quickly and easily sounding great.
No pricing or availability info yet, but as soon as we hear anything, we’ll let you know.
Marantz
Related posts: Marantz serves up new amplifiers, tuner, CD player | Marantz launches high-performance amp and CD player
Denon announces 'entry-level' premium Blu-Ray player
If this is ‘entry-level’, then I’m mildly terrified to see what Denon would describe as ‘high-end’. Oh wait. Now I’m scared. Anyway, back to the DVD-1800-BD. It’s a Blu-Ray player. It’s got HDMI 1.3a, full bit stream output of Dolby and DTS-HD audio, and 1080p upscaling of DVDs and 2-channel audio. It’s also got a stereo output, if you want to use it as a very expensive CD player.
There’s an SD card slot, too, and it incorporates a secondary audio and video decoder for picture-in-picture functionality, if you can handle watching two things at once. It’s going to be available at the start of December, and cost a whopping ‘entry-level’ £600. It’ll be available in Black and Silver.
Denon
Related posts: Denon shows off super-high-end DVD-3800BD Blu-ray player | Denon DP-200USB turntable – the stylish way to turn your records into mp3s
