Well, now that you’re in the thick of the Puja festivities and have (hopefully) done all your gift shopping and giving, isn’t it time you gifted that special someone who you spend close to half your lives with something? I’m talking about your houses, folks! Cue to the slew of launches in the home entertainment space, and there’s certainly something, small or big, in here to add some life to your ‘living room’. We check out the latest, and see whether they deserve pride of place for the next movie/cricket match/reality show (if you swing that way!).
LG BD370 Blu-ray player and HB954TB Home Theatre System
 |
| LG HB954TB HOME THEATRE SYSTEM |
With the high-definition format wars over and Blu-ray title availability finally picking up in local video rentals and stores, how long can you deny yourself the ultimate home viewing experience? One of the new breed of Blu-ray players is the LG BD 370, which expands the format’s web capabilities beyond movie-related downloads. It provides access to YouTube via its wired Internet connection, bringing the site’s plethora of movie clips into your living room and onto your TV. You can do all the usual Blu-ray Disc Live tricks, like downloading movie content and commentaries.
Sadly the BD370 doesn’t include any memory on-board for web downloads, so you’ll need to get your USB pen drive and plug it into the USB port on the front panel. The USB functionality allows the BD370 to play back movie formats like DivX, MPEG4, and audio formats like MP3, WMA, plus JPEG image files. In addition, this baby upscales your DVD content to a glorious 1080p Full HD resolution, if your TV supports it. In terms of output ports, the BD370 has HDMI, component and composite for video, and an optical digital, and a stereo out for audio, but no 5.1 or 7.1 sound system audio-outs unfortunately.
Given the rather competitive pricing (Rs 19,990), the BD370 performs rather well with excellent picture quality and colour reproduction, besting the PS3 in some cases, and it has the added advantage of outputting native High Definition audio streams as well.
Of course, what you’d really rather stretch and splurge on would be a full-fledged home theatre system like the LG HB954TB. Featuring four tall wine-flute shaped speakers, a centre speaker, a sub-woofer, and a Blu-ray/DVD player amplifier, the HB954TB is a classy addition to any contemporary living room with its black-and-blue hues, with the typical-of-Blu-ray-players bluish tinge adding to the appeal.
 |
| LG BD370 BLU-RAY PLAYER |
Connectivity options abound in this system, with 2 HDMI-ins, 1 HDMI out, a USB 2.0 slot, 2 Digital audio-ins (1 coaxial/1 optical) analog audio line in, 1 component-out, and 1 composite out — phew! Plus, you get the wired Internet (Ethernet) port as is present in the BD370, which allows for direct Youtube access on the TV.
On the decoding front, it supports Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD master. It’s worth noting that the Blu-ray player incorporates an iPod dock, a feature that is increasingly being seen on home theatre systems these days. The integration is sensible and complete — content on YouTube, iPod or external storage can be accessed by controlling the Blu-ray player’s user interface with the bundled remote control, which by the way, is not backlit. Keep in mind, iPod video output is still only via the composite cable, so quality takes a hit.
On the performance front, the HB954TB delivers reasonably well, with well-defined vocals and high-frequency reproduction. The bass was a bit lacking, and the system tended to distort when pushed beyond a reasonably high volume. Video performance was much better, with quick and flawless DVD/Blu-ray playback, and acceptable amounts of image quality loss when it came to upscaling DivX content. So, for Rs 51,990, the HB954TB is a very sensible decision for a Blu-ray home theatre system, if a bit lacking on the audio front. Heck, it’s worth it just to eliminate the tickets, dragging the kids, buying the popcorn and spending a fortune every time a new movie premieres!
One For All Protecto 4 universal remote
 |
So, what do you have now — a home theatre system, a widescreen TV, a satellite receiver, possibly more? Keep your sanity intact, and replace all the remotes — yes, those little control devices which are finally found between the sofa cushions — with one single remote — the One For All Protecto 4 universal remote (Rs 1,499). It’s not as expensive as some of the others I’ve seen, but then again, this skips on the fancy LCD displays and customisations to create a rugged solution that just works. One look, and you realise that the stripes covering the unit are not just for show, but since they’re made of rubber, they cushion the unit from impact and shock — essentially when the kids get at it.
Once out of the box, the Protecto 4 can immediately be set-up to control up to four infra-red-based AV devices at once (TVs, DVD players, satellite receivers, and set-top boxes). Configuration is done via punching in matching codes for your TV etc from the manual’s
appendix, or simply using the learn function to transfer specific functions from the conventional single- purpose remote to the Protecto 4.
In addition, the control unit supports macros (the equivalent of several keys pressed in sequence), allowing you to configure a combination of commands to be executed at the press of one button. Unlike the HB954TB’s remote, the Protecto 4 features backlit
keys — thoroughly practical for any late-night movie viewing.
LG HS102G Ultra-Mobile Projector
 |
Now, if you’re looking to accessorise the den, plus have something portable enough to carry around for presentations as well, pick up the LG HS102G Ultra-Mobile Projector. It’s ultra-small for starters — 154mm x 117mm x 50mm —and throws in some neat features and accessories. The bundle comes with all the requisite cables, and best of all — a bag to carry all of this! Very neat, and really drives the portability aspect home. The standout feature on this product is the inclusion of a USB port that’s capable of handling DivX movies as well as photos and music, so you can leave the laptop behind on your next vacation.
Build quality is solid, and the unit felt like it could take the rigours of a serious business trip as well. I thought that the jarring grilles that do the job of heat dissipation could have been better finished, but as long as they do the job and don’t burn this baby out, that should be okay.
Using an LED lamp and regular DLP display technology, it has a claimed lamp life of 30,000 hours, which is rather tempting, and the maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels is sufficient for most computer/DVD playback, but not much better. More importantly, at 160 ANSI lumens, the LG HS102G suffers when it comes to brightness, if you don’t factor in its size. I was able to manage 40-in-45-in diagonal image with some dim lights on and some ambient light streaming in through the curtains.
Darken the room, and the image gets much better and the colours become richer. My big gripes with this product? The 16-Amp power plug coupled with the heavy power adapter, and the Rs 59,990 price. Makes the recommendation a little difficult, possibly only for people who travel a lot and need a light and capable mini-projector.
Lomega ScreenPlay Pro HD
 |
And finally, if you’re the sort who’s got a stash of movies downloaded and just wants a simple way of pushing them onto your big-screen TV, try out the Iomega ScreenPlay Pro HD multimedia hard drive (Rs 11,200 for the 500 GB version).
In layspeak, the Iomega ScreenPlay Pro HD is a Windows-only standalone, single 500GB/1TB hard drive and network storage that you can attach to your TV and play media. The Iomega Screenplay Pro HD multimedia player can stream media over a network and record and play video and audio files directly from its internal 500GB hard drive.
Plug it into your TV via the HDMI cable and you can play back MP3, JPEG, and DivX/MPEG4/MKV, but the device trips up on WMV files or H.264 files, should you have any. For playback, the Iomega Screenplay Pro HD supports a range of NTSC and PAL resolutions ranging from 480p to 1080i, though it doesn’t offer 1080p.
Fortunately, its ability to record an input source to its hard drive via the composite input connections redeems it mildly. From there on, you can connect a digital video camera or VCR to the device and record directly off the source device to the internal hard drive — awesome if you’re looking to digitise old video tapes, like I am. The only thing that holds it back really is the clunky user interface used to navigate around the device options, but I suspect that may just be a firmware fix away.
