LATEST ADDITIONS

LG’s BH8220B enters the all-in-one system battle arena wearing a silver, boxy design that recalls the DVD-based systems of yesteryear. It’s as if someone at the Korean firm’s design lab handed in the wrong piece of paper. That said, at least it’s a tonal match for the brand’s current range of super-stylish flatscreen TVs, and the brushed aluminium finish, particular on the side-firing subwoofer, is pleasing on the eye.

The latest flagship in Sony’s Blu-ray player fleet is surprisingly self-effacing. It’s priced at just over 200 notes and has a relatively generic design (slim, black, gently curved in places), yet it packs a forward-looking feature set that few players at any price point can match. After several hours of use, I found myself looking for a catch. Is the BDP-S790 player really the rock-solid, gold-plated bargain it first appears to be?

Following on from our earlier story, Warner Home Video has now officially announced that it will be releasing The Dark Knight Trilogy Limited Edition boxset on December 3rd in the UK, the same day as the final part in the trilogy - The Dark Knight Rises - arrives on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download. The giftset includes all three films (plus all existing special features) and an exclusive book that will 'take fans deeper into the epic franchise'.

If you enjoy spending as much time fettling and tweaking your home cinema system as you do watching movies, you might want to skip this review. For what we have here is the latest version of Audiolab’s stripped-down AV processor that puts almost its entire R&D spend into audiophile components rather than features. In fact, there isn’t any video processing under that stylish aluminium case at all, so even the term ‘AV processor’ is a bit remiss. What you do get is a tuned and upgraded 8000AP, which we liked a lot, now with v1.4 HDMI pass-through switching.