Pioneer unleashes mega-spec Blu-ray home cinema system

Pioneer is not a brand known for doing things by halves. So we guess we shouldn't be surprised to discover that its new Blu-ray home cinema system, the LX01BD, appears to be a cut above the norm.

For starters, there's the way it looks. All of its elements - its Blu-ray deck, multichannel amp and full 5.1 speaker system - are resplendent in a glossy piano black finish designed to complement Pioneer's KURO plasma TVs.

What's more, the system's speakers are really unfeasibly small; just 122.5mm wide by 89.5mm high and 104mm deep. Yet Pioneer assures us they're still up to the job of delivering Blu-ray's HD audio thanks to the rather handy fact that they're Omni-Surround jobs. In other words, they use a dodecahedral design to pump out their sound over a full 360 degrees, enabling them to produce a soundstage much larger than you'd imagine possible from such diminutive boxes. Ooh, fancy.

The Blu-ray section can decode both Dolby True-HD and DTS-HD audio soundtracks, meanwhile, and the receiver pumps out a claimed 400W. All good stuff.

There is one potential bumnote in the whole LX01BD story, though: the fact that its Blu-ray deck is only built to the Profile 1.1 spec rather than the latest Profile 2.0. But hell; this only means you don't get BD Live functionality, and so far that's proved about as exciting as fly poo.

The cost for all this home cinema finery, by the way, is a cool £2,000.