Labs

It's important to have satellite speakers at the right height if you're going to get the best from your home cinema kit. However, if your living room is rather sparse, you may not have anywhere to place all those speakers. If you don't fancy drilling holes in your walls, one alternative is to buy a kit with floor-standing speakers such as Panasonic's SC-PT850.

Each of the tall, slim speakers has its drivers near the top, so they should be around ear height when you're sitting down. They look impressive, but they feel a bit lightweight. The centre speaker is a more traditional design, and the subwoofer isn't powered. Combined they are the most powerful set here, and capable of a truly terrifying volume.

The

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speakers are reasonably well balanced and made a good job of our test audio tracks. We found the subwoofer disappointing considering its high power rating, as it lacked punch and depth. The overall surround-sound effect wasn't as convincing as that from Pioneer's DCS-363, but the Pioneer's speakers will be harder to position accurately. The SC-PT850 also comes with a calibration microphone to help you set it up precisely.

The main unit is rather ugly, with lots of white text labels and no coherent design. The rear has all the ports you're likely to need, with SCART, component and HDMI outputs. The HDMI ports are able to output resolutions at up to 1080p and will upscale DVDs, so those with the latest high-definition displays are well catered for. Video looked detailed, though not any noticeably better than on the DCS-363.

Like the DCS-363, the SC-PT850 can't play back DivX or XviD files from USB storage devices, so you'll have to burn the files to disc. It's easy to browse audio and video files from a USB drive, and pictures looked detailed.

Panasonic's SC-PT850 home cinema kit has no serious drawbacks and sounds impressive. It's more expensive than the Pioneer and Samsung kits, though, and its price is only justified if you really need the floor-standing speakers.