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Reviews and guides for all of the best all-in-one home cinema systems in the UK |
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Sony DARRH1000 ReviewThe Sony DARRH1000 is not the cheapest home cinema system - retailing at around £1000, it is certainly much pricier than the budget units on the market. But with its typically Sony design, and some great value added feature this machine does not skimp on packing the punch. The system comes with a 5.1 speaker system, a stylish metalic looking subwoofer, and a sleek DVD unit. Built into this is a superb 700 RMS watt digital amp for crystal clear audio, and a 160GB hard drive for recording your favourite TV programs, a built in AM/FM radio tuner, and a DVD recorder for writing episodes of Lost to DVD. It supports almost every sound encoding under the sun, boasting compatibility with 5.1 channel Dolby Digital, DTS digital surround, and ProLogic I and II. It also supports a nice range of input formats, including DVD, VCD, MP3 CD and JPEG CD. Its unfortunate that Sony did not bundle SACD and DVD-A into this collection, as that would have covered all of the bases. The Sony DARRH1000 doesn't lack functionality to deal with all of these devices. The menu interface is nicely laid out and easy to navigate, and Sony have added lots of little friendly features to help you get around your system, including an index picture screen to allow you to preview the contents of each DVD cleanly and easily, support for CD Text to see song and track information when playing compatible CDs, and a Live Pause feature to let you pause live TV while you put the kettle on. In terms of outputs, the Sony DARRH1000 does well. It has 2 RGB SCART sockets, which produce consistently good video output, a composite video output for the ultimate visuals, a digital optical audio output for connection to MP3 and MiniDisc players and a phono audio out for connecting to another recording device. Video output is routed through progressive scan technology to enhance the image and give more impact. For input, the DARRH1000 comes with S-Video and phono audio inputs for connecting your PC or games console and making the most of your flat screen and surround sound system. Setting up the unit, despite all of its features, is surprisingly easy. The Test Mode for audio set up is nice and effective and Sony have put a lot of work into the initial configuration options. Once its all up and running its time to test... And the result is great - the DARRH1000 produces great visuals even on the biggest LCD screens. Its colours are balanced and vivid, and the there is no loss of sharpness. We hardly noticed any MPEG compression artefacts in the slightest, and movement was smooth and unjerky. In audio the system is almost flawless, with crystal clear sounds and great subtleties. Strangely it seems to lack a touch on the bass, but its not noticeable except to the absolute connoseur. 
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Conclusion The Sony DARRH1000 is a superb home cinema system. It has a great feature set, brilliant visual and audio impact, and beautiful looks. It supports almost all of the common input and audio formats, and it has a good range of outputs. The combination of HDD and DVD recording is nice and the user interface is intuitive and easy to use. Just would be nice to see SACD and DVD-A support for it to obtain perfection. Resources |