Sony BDV-E370 Blu-ray home cinema kit

See no evil, hear no evil

Review If you can’t be bothered messing around with a separate Blu-ray player, amp and surround sound speaker set-up, then an all-in-one home cinema kit such as the BDV-E370 from Sony may be just the sort of set up you’re looking for.

Sound and vision: Sony's BDV-E370

The main unit combines a Blu-ray player with an integrated amp and surround sound decoder capable of delivering 850W of power. This drives a 5.1 speakers configuration that includes twin front and rear satellites, a very thin centre channel speaker and a passive subwoofer.

In terms of design, the main unit won’t win any awards. It’s quite boxy and has a slightly odd looking lip on the front that houses the playback controls. It’s certainly not as attractive as something like Samsung’s more elegantly styled HT-BD1252. On the plus side the glossy black finish does mean that it tends to blend into the background drawing little attention to itself when it’s sitting in your AV cabinet.

When it comes to setup, however, the system couldn’t be more straightforward. There’s colour coding on the speaker wires and connectors so it’d difficult to go wrong when you’re hooking up the cables. More impressive is the fact that the BDV-E370 is one of the few budget systems to have an auto calibration feature.

All you have to do is call up the configuration menu, plug in the supplied mic and position it where you usually sit in the room. The system then sends a blast of white noise from each speaker to the mic and uses the results to automatically set the individual volume levels and delay times for each speaker – something that saves you a whole load of hassle.

Alas, there are no HDMI inputs for hooking up external HD kit

Given the price tag, the rear of the E370 isn’t exactly laden down with ports. While you do get component alongside the HDMI out, there are no HDMI inputs for connecting external high definition kit like a Playstation 3. Instead, you’ll have to feed audio from external sources into it using either its optical or coax digital inputs.