Home Cinema is a big market now, I guess mainly due to the fact it’s so expensive to go to the cinema and with the development of HD video and sound it’s just as good to watch at home that it is to go out and spend a fortune on tickets and sweets. Panasonic have just revealed two new models of Blu-Ray home cinema kit, neither top end or indeed bottom end they certainly are pleasing to the eye and have a couple of nifty features.

Firstly what’s interesting is they are both 2.1 setups (incorporating 2 front speakers and a subwoofer) yet Panasonic say the sound output from them will sound pretty much like a 7.1 setup. How? Apparently it’s all due to the technology inside the speakers and their construction. Even the small subwoofer, which is on the small side in comparison to most Panasonic claims gives “powerful, reverberating bass”.

What’s great aesthetically pleasing is the design and use. The front of the unit has a sliding door which when opened allows the user to insert a disc or dock an iPod. When an iPod is docked, you can play any content from it onto your telly. Other features of both models are “High Precision 4:4:4 and PHL Chroma Processor Plus technology”. In English that basically means it boosts picture quality of your content. The only difference between the two models is the SC-BTX77 model has Pure Direct Sound speakers, in other words they’re better . Another feature is the Panasonic Viera cast. This allows YouTube video access and playback and there’s also a USB port and SD card access for even more content playback.

Available now the RRP for the kit starts from £450.

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Panasonic SC-BTX77 and BTX75 : Blu-Ray Home Cinema

Quite possibly the best sounding Blu-Ray player at the moment, and you’ll think so too after reading about this “blighty”-fied masterpiece.

The Samsung BD-C8500M is a 3D Blu-Ray player with everything and I mean everything you could possibly want or need in a media playing marvel. Not only will it play your Blu-Rays but inside it has a DVB-T2 tuner, yes thats right a “FREEVIEW HD READY TUNER.” Not only that it’s also packing a 500MB HDD to record it all onto and with the World Cup coming soon there’s no better way to get yourself ready for it with this.

Wait there’s more!! It also can connect to the Internet@TV platform. This allows the user to use an on-demand service including BBC iPlayer and that lovely LoveFilm movie streaming service. One can also stream media straight from your desktop,laptop or server(whichever you have) as it has Wi-Fi and is DLNA certified.

Coming Soon, around April/May time we don’t have a price on it yet but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this despite the fact it should have a hefty price tag to match the weight of spec.

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Samsung BD-C8500M Blu-Ray

The 3D revolution is now in full swing with companies such as Sony future-proofing and readying its new AV tech ready for our 3D future. We’ve seen the up-coming Bravia TV’s that Sony are coming our way, well now we have some Blu-Ray players to match them.

The BDP-S470 and BDP-S570 will both be 3D compatible the first requiring a future software update and the latter will be compatible straight out the box. Both will achieve this with Active Shutter 3D technology delivering full 1080P HD quality 3D images to your peepers.

Also designed much like its new line of Bravia TVs, these black beauties will be internet enabled. The S470, the obvious entry-level one, will connect via ethernet or can go Wi-Fi with the help of a Sony wireless dongle. The S-570 will do this all by itself. Once connected they can hook up to the Bravia Internet Video service we’ve spoke of before, allowing catch-up TV playback like BBC iPlayer, YouTube  or stream from LoveFilm’s new service. Both can play media from USB but S-570 is DLNA compatible for home network streaming.

Both are arriving sometime this month the BDP-S470 is currently on the US Sony store for $199.99 and the S570 for $249.99.

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Sony BDP-S470/S570 : Blu-Ray

It took them a while to face the reality of losing the HD format war but eventually Toshiba buckled and decided to make a foray into the Blu-Ray market. Now we have it’s second blu-ray player on the cards the BDX2100KB, a respectable player on the market with a respectable price tag to boot.

As said it’s respectable but not the best blu-ray player on the market. It’s BD Live compatible but without a Wi-Fi connection you’ll just have to make do with the hard reality of wires. As per it does the full 1080p video output at 24fps and does the usual DVD upscaling. Put all this with Dolby True HD and DTS Master Audio which you can output at 7.1. One great feature it does have is MKV support via a USB port which will also play DivX.

On sale in May for £129.99 this will appeal to those who just want a Blu-Ray player a little better than the lowest entries but not “all that”

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Toshiba Fest!! Part 2 : Blu-Ray

More news on yet another Blu-Ray player. We touched on this a couple of months back but now we’ver got some UK details on it. This wireless enabled player allows a WiFi connection to your network so no wired router access is needed for internet connection for all those updates and internet extras your blu-rays may need. Its also DLNA certified meaning you can share media from any other gadget that is also DLNA certified……brilliant eh??

Full Spec :

• Full 1080p
• 7.1 sound output
• Multi Format playback including DivX HD and MKV(brilliant)
• BD Live Compatible
• YouTube Browsing
• WiFi Connection
• USB port(matched with the file support can watch films straight off an ext HDD)

LG said it will be available at the end of this month and will set you back between £250 and £300

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Blu-Ray Player Fest : LG BD390

After licking its wounds from the hi-def format battle which Sony obviously won, Toshiba announced recently they would finally swallow some pride and go into Blu-Ray production. Well here it is the BDX 2000 a fully feature packed Blu-Ray player well worth looking into.

Full Specs :

• Blu-ray playback and DVD upscaling
• DivX HD and AVCHD support (for camcorder footage)
• 24fps True Cinema output
• Support for bitstream audio output via HDMI
• Blu-ray profile 2.0 software
• BonusView features and BD Live
• SD card slot
• HDMI 1.3 with Regza Link

Toshiba have been quoted as saying the BDX2000 will be “available across Europe at the end of this year or beginning of next year, depending on the country.” No price as yet.

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Toshiba BDX2000 : Toshiba’s First Blu-Ray

After Toshiba’s HD-DVD lost the HD format war to Sony’s Blu-Ray, it has finally decided to release a Blu-Ray player. It has been 18 months since the major movie studios decided to stop producing films onto HD-DVD opting for the Sony format.

Toshiba have since been working on upscaling regular outputs to HD quality. Daily Yomiuri a Japanese newspaper, has reported that the electronics giant will be releasing a standalone Blu-Ray player by the end of the year aswell as a Blu-Ray recorder.

Despite the UK CEO claiming that the Blu-Ray format would soon be outdated, blu-ray sales are up 91% in the first half of 2009 alone so they might aswell get into it while the moneys there.

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Have Toshiba buckled : Blu-Ray player due this year!

If you’re looking for a top quality feature packed Blu-Ray player that isn’t a PS3, but don’t want to pay a PS3 price, this could be for you.

On the outside the player is relatively thin and aesthetically pleasing, the inside packs power to load up your blu-rays quickly and in full HD. The player has profile 2.0, and can upscale DVD’s has USB connections and has the ability to pluck your favourite YouTube videos from the net and play them on your telly in SD.

Full Specs :

• Full HD 1080p Output via HDMI
• 1080p Up-scaling of Standard DVDs
• Wide Audio Format Support(Dolby True HD, DTS-HD)
• BD Live : Enjoy additional movie content via internet
• YouTube : Free access to YouTube where 15 hours of content is updated every minute
• LG SIMPLINK Multi-device Control
• USB 2.0
• Strong Circle & LED Indicator
• HD Movie Playback (H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC codec)
• Compatible Container Format : *.mkv, *.mp4, *.avi
• DVD, Audio CD, CD-RW/R
• JPEG, MP3, WMA
• DivX Playback
• Quick Start up & Disc Loading
• Instant Tray Open
• Bonus View

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Feature Packed, yet cheap LG BD370 Blu-Ray Player

Finally BD-Live is going to become useful. Sony is teaming up with Gracenote, those lovely media database peeps that gets all the track info when you put your cd’s in your computer, have brainstormed MovieIQ. Basically its IMDB while you watch your film.

If you want to know who’s who, what they’ve been in before or what music’s on in the background you’ll no longer have to fire up your pc or laptop to find out who or what. It’ll also tell you all sorts of facts and trivia about the film you’re watching.

This should be coming to Sony studio releases from September with new titles like Angels and Demons to the old skool ones like Easy Rider.

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Blu-Ray : MovieIQ coming to BD-Live

The Popcorn Hour A-110 was a big hit with geeks around the world for its almost unrivalled ability to handle media. Unfortunately it was not all perfect, the unit was a bit slow to navigate, it transferring files to it was extremely slow due to the 100Mb Ethernet and various other little annoyances.

Week now it seems most of these issues will hopefully be ironed out with the release of the Popcorn Hour C200. Some of the key improvements that are worth noticing are:

• A more powerful SMP8643 Sigma Chip compared to the A-110’s SMP8635. This should improve a lot of the issues the A-110 had.
• Gigabit Ethernet – This will make a huge difference if you are running a gigabit network.
• Possibly support for DVD and Blu-Ray. The removable tray at the front of the player apparently will support a DVD drive or Blu-Ray Drive
• It is significantly bigger than the A-110.

Obviously you will also get all the usual great features of a Network Media Tank including UPnP, Samba, NFS, BitTorrent, Usenet. Then web services such as YouTube, Vuze, and Revision 3 and finally the ability to play almost any media file you throw at it include 1080p videos.

Full specification after the jump.

The above image is from HomeTheatre.co.il and shows the C200 with a Blu-Ray Drive.

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Popcorn Hour C200 Network Media Tank Announced