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Harrison Ford’s mumbled dialogue, delicate background ambience, sudden crashes and gunfire are relayed with admirable attack and clarity. If there’s a weak link in the chain it’s the sub, which isn’t quite deep or punchy enough to really knock your neighbours for six, but it still manages to lend a solid, well-integrated foundation to the action. We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do.
JPEG photos and MP3 and WMA music files can be played from a USB stick or streamed from a computer. For the technical answer, I fired up our trusty HQV demo discs, starting with Blu-ray at 1080p output. On HD Noise Reduction, the HT-BD8200 delivered very good image detail but definite noise as well, on both the flowers and the sailboat segments. In terms of Video Resolution, the fine horizontal lines in the corner boxes were evident, proving full resolution processing. But the Stadium portion of the exam displayed a general noise in the upper deck, giving way to definite moiré on the right side near the end of the panning shot. Bought individually you can find this pairing online for around £100 more, so you save money as well as enjoying the added convenience of getting everything you need in one hit.
Big Picture Big Sound
From my pressing Play to the arrival of the Paramount HD logos of Star Trek, the player takes a respectably quick ten seconds to a load a Blu-ray disc. The video quality is here is excellent, the elaborate, squeaky-clean future looking as glorious as ever. Blade Runner looks terrific with plenty of natural detail, low noise and virtually none of the splotchiness of light and shadow that can plague this disc on a lesser player. Soundbars are a compact convenience which, at their best, can create a convincing home theater audio experience from a single speaker array. A separate Night mode boosts the sound quality at lower volumes and dims the front panel lights.
The two front speakers, boasting a new top mounted speaker design which expands the listening area, are constructed with rigid, low-density bamboo cones to achieve pure sound and crisp dialogue. The system’s 96-kHz Surround Re-master function enhances the sound quality of CDs and other sources and even raises the quality of the multi-channel audio data on Blu-ray Discs and DVDs to produce highly realistic sounds. The HB354BS marks LG’s entry into the world of Blu-ray systems and is one of two one-box packages hitting the market in May. The step-up HT954PB features a 5.1-channel configuration with ‘Champagne’ style speakers, and bumps the power up to 1000W.
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Netflix and Pandora StreamingWith built-in Ethernet or WiFi connections, the Samsung HT-BD8200 provides instant access to Netflix and Pandora services to add more entertainment possibilities. When you purchase an item using our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. At the center of the HT-BD8200 unit is a compact, wonderfully featured Blu-ray player. Elsewhere on the feature list is Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS HD Master Audio decoding, the impact of which will no doubt be reduced by the 2.1-channel configuration but you should be able to hear the increased sonic resolution offered by these formats. Alternatives include the Samsung HT-BD8200 and the HT-BD1250 (standard 5.1-channel design), which--aside from their different designs--offer the same basic feature sets.
In general the deck is slick and speedy at handling Blu-ray discs, surfing around pop-up menus, scanning through discs and skipping chapters without the annoying pauses that blight some of its rivals. These bookshelf-style speakers are finely crafted and look attractive without being showy. The gloss black finish surrounding the speaker mesh is eye-catching enough, and the cables are pre-attached to each one so you don’t have to faff around with fiddly springclips or binding posts. High Definition SoundWith the integrated Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, DTS and Dolby Digital Plus decoders, enjoy ultra-realistic HD surround sound like it was meant to be. There is always a choice to be made when choosing a home cinema system, and the flipside of this relatively cable-light system is that the HT-C6200 doesn’t actually offer surround sound.
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And for once, it actually does – when you play a Blu-ray disc, the most striking thing is how naturally powerful and dynamic the system is. Although the volume goes up to 40, we rarely felt compelled to push it over 20 – but if you do, the speakers show few signs of strain. The generosity continues with the inclusion of optical, coaxial and analogue audio inputs, plus component and composite video outputs. The connection roster is completed by an FM antenna input for the built-in radio tuner, a 3.5mm minijack input for MP3 players and an Ethernet port to take advantage of the system’s Blu-ray Profile 2.0 capabilities.
The HT-X710T was one of Samsung's funkier home theater products of 2008, a 2.1-style home theater system with a tapered, wall-mountable DVD player head unit. It's also Wi-Fi-ready, but you'll need to invest in a separate USB 802.11n dongle, or stick with wired Ethernet connectivity instead. Other niceties include an iPod dock and the ability to stream audio from A2DP-compatible Bluetooth audio devices, such as music phones. Like the other Blu-ray home-theater-in-a-box systems in Samsung's 2009 lineup, the HT-BD7200 also includes a "green-friendly" kelp-based subwoofer. Sporting a sleek and compact form factor, the SC-BTX70 is a 2.1 system delivers realistic virtual 7.1 channel sound dispersed through a wide listening area. Panasonic’s advanced proprietary surround technology delivers Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD virtual 7.1-channel surround sound.
LG HB354BS 2.1-Channel Blu-ray System Review
Blockbuster ("powered by Roxio CinemaNow") requires a Blockbuster account, and we then activate the player online at /samsungbd. We can stream trailers immediately (even before we link/open the account) and we can rent new releases for $3.99 or buy various titles at various prices. Older titles are available for rental or purchase and are generally less expensive. The service itself is pretty straightforward, and similar to Netflix; configure, click, and watch; but with a different business model behind it. The system also delivers excellent picture quality, which is comparable to that of the BD370.
Picture Detail was a mixed bag, the grass was soft and a little twitchy and the stairs lost all their definition about halfway up, but the bridge and the statue looked fine. All of the Noise Reduction shots were at least a little, well, noisy, some very much so, with most of the images lacking genuine, natural detail. With Motion Adaptive Noise Reduction, the sky was noisy and in general the picture lacked detail.
But if we have one gripe about the system’s sound performance, it’s that there’s simply not enough welly behind it. Control your iPod with the LG remote control and an easy to use on screen display and as the content is being played back, the iPod or iPhone is being recharged. DVD or Blu-ray players featuring 1080P up scaling can improve the picture quality of a Standard Definition DVD to that of Full High Definition 1080P picture by using the HDMI connection and filling in the missing details. For the ultimate picture, a Blu-ray disc will provide all the detailed picture quality without the need for picture to be up scaled. Blu-ray Full HD PlaybackWith Blu-ray full HD playback, enjoy brilliant images with 1080p high definition resolution and audio that’s of the highest quality.
Jaggies Test Pattern 1 had an admirably smooth image at all points on the dial, but surprisingly after the flying colors of the three Jaggies tests thus far, on Pattern 2 the bottom line was problematic, the top two were okay. The Jaggies Flag Test showed stair-stepping on the red and white stripes while the background building was noisy and not well-detailed. Because we got one of the first samples, there was no price information available at the time of writing so it’s hard to assess its value for money. But knowing LG it’s bound to be competitively priced – and after hearing its performance, the press release’s claim that it produces “a sound more typically found in systems three times the price” is an encouraging sign.
The main reason to choose the HT-C6200 over a £100 Blu-ray player is, of course, for cinema sound. Although the machine can decode the Blu-ray HD audio formats - Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio - you’d best forget 5.1 sound effects. The system’s two speakers can deliver stereo only - its quasi-surround mode is less than successful. Instead a DPS button on the remote supplies modes for Smart Sound , Power Bass (initially frighteningly boomy - especially with action movies) - and a superb MP3 Enhancer that audibly lifts lo-res music.
In the box you’ll find a combined Blu-ray player/receiver unit, two front speakers and a passive subwoofer. The surprisingly chunky main unit is styled in a snazzy gloss-black finish, jazzed up further with a volume dial surrounded by a ring of blue light and a row of touch-sensitive buttons. It’s attractive and fairly well built, but falls foul of the hollow, plasticky feel common among one-box systems. We like surprises here at TrustedReviews, and the HB354BS is an extremely pleasant one. We admit that we didn’t have high hopes given the system’s inevitable build quality issues, but its sound quality is more potent and poised than expected, injecting movies with an irresistible sense of excitement despite the lack of centre and surround speakers.
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