Samsung HT-BD2 home cinema kit

This is the very first all-in-one home cinema kit with Blu-ray on board. It's an ambitious eight-speaker effort, with one for each corner, plus rear left, rear right, centre and subwoofer. Musical nuances are a little lost in all that, but screaming treble and gut-punching bass will thrust you into the heart of film soundtracks. In a good way, that is. Other digital audio inputs can go in the back from, say, a games console and there's support for the latest HD audio formats too. Blu-ray pictures were as good as we hoped, and it upscales DVDs brilliantly too. On the downside, you can't plug in other video sources and it doesn't yet support Blu-ray's BD-Live interactivity. But if you're looking for an easy, very capable HD setup, it's top of our list.