Panasonics first 5.1 home cinema system for 2013 is as high-end as it gets. With 1,000 watts of power, a network-connected Blu-ray player and a Lightning-compatible dock for the latest iOS devices, its a great upgrade for anyone yet to add a surround sound setup to their TV.
The main unit is only slightly larger than the average Blu-ray player, yet theres room on the back for six speaker inputs, one for each of the five satellite speakers and a sixth for the subwoofer. They use proprietary connectors, but the speakers themselves use spring terminal connections, so its not too difficult to extend the bundled cables if they arent long enough for your room. The subwoofers cable is permanently attached, so youd have to cut it to extend it, but we found it long enough for our test area and should be fine for many living rooms.
From the front, the player is sleek yet understated, with a reflective black front panel and silver chassis. The Power, Eject and Play buttons are located on top, but youll need to use the remote control for anything other than starting Blu-ray playback. A push-out iOS dock with Lightning connector is located to the side of the disc tray, which flips down when you want to insert a disc or load files from the front-facing USB and SD card slots.
At the back, youll find two HDMI inputs and a single HDMI output that supports Audio Return Channel, which means youll be able to send audio from your TVs integrated Freeview tuner through the speakers. Theres a single USB port, but its designed for Panasonics Skype camera (TY-CC20W, £85 from www.amazon.co.uk). Digital optical and analogue RCA inputs, an FM antenna and an Ethernet port complete the selection, with no legacy video connections for older TVs.
Panasonic has added its Smart Viera platform to the BTT500. To make the most of it, you must connect the BTT500 to the internet with an Ethernet cable or the integrated Wi-Fi. Once online, Netflix subscribers can use the service by pressing the dedicated button on the remote control. To use AceTrax, BBC iPlayer and YouTube, users must use the BTT500s grid-based user interface, which has barely changed from last year. It feels slow compared to Blu-ray players from other manufacturers, taking several seconds to load new pages or launch applications. Youll find Facebook, Twitter and Skype here too, as well as a marketplace with few extra programs available to download, but theres nothing ground-breaking here.
Although the limited smart TV services arent that impressive, the BTT500 is well equipped to play your own videos. Its file format support is excellent, and the BTT500 let us play almost all of our media, including MKVs and MOVs. The one exception was native DivX, which didnt even appear in the menu. Conveniently, the SDXC card slot at the front of the system let us play raw AVCHD footage from a camcorder or digital camera.
Blu-ray discs started very quickly, often within 15 seconds. Once playing, we were impressed with the incredibly well-defined images from our reference films. Panasonic enables the Super Resolution and Detail Clarity functions to add extra sharpening, which creates the impression of extra detail. The effect works best when set to a conservative level, but it didnt introduce unwanted noise. We did notice that Detail Clarity can reduce film grain effects at the expense of detail, so we had to find a balance between the two settings. Its definitely worth experimenting with the settings to find your own personal preference, though.
Here's a 1:1 crop of Blu-ray playback on the BTT500 - click to enlarge
For reference, here's the same scene played through a PS3 console - click to enlarge
There are a huge amount of other image quality settings to use, too, including five presets and a user mode that grants full control over brightness, contrast, sharpness, colour, gamma and noise reduction.
Sound quality was equally impressive, with great positional audio and a clear centre channel that meant we could always detect speech, without satellite speakers drowning it out. Although the mid-range had plenty of presence, we thought the system could have done with a more precise high end. It lacks detail in certain situations, although its not as noticeable in films as it is when playing music.
We were impressed with the amount of bass the small subwoofer manages to create. It isnt overpowering and wont rattle the furniture, but it did justice to our test footage and creates plenty of bass during explosions and action sequences. It has enough power to satisfy, with 65 per cent volume proving an ample sweet spot for our tests.
The BTT500 is reasonably priced for a combined Blu-ray player and home cinema system. Although you arent able to upgrade the system at a later date as you can with a system comprised of separates, and the Lightning docks superfluous if you dont own an iOS device, this is still a great all-in-one upgrade for anyone looking to take the first step into home cinema.
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