LATEST ADDITIONS

It’s perhaps ironic that Yamaha, the original proponent of home cinema and multichannel sound, came to the Blu-ray party a little late in the day. But the brand has been playing catch-up fast.

Many PC owners will be familiar with Nero’s ‘Burning ROM’ – this disc-writing software is, after all, bundled with many drives and PCs. The Nero Multimedia Suite 10 now takes matters on a step further by enabling users to create and organise content as well as commit it to disc. When the software is installed, you’ll find a collection of applications that cover a wide range of tasks including video/photo editing, soundtrack mixing, DVD authoring, video (re)compression, disc-burning and even the backup or recovery of important computer data. Some of these programs link to others, as and when they’re needed.

Samsung isn’t known for its AV receivers, but that hasn’t stopped the Korean behemoth having a stab with this affordable 5.1-channel effort. It doesn’t have the reputation to rival audio luminaries like Onkyo, Yamaha and Denon, but the HW-C500 may attract owners of other Samsung kit who like their system’s collars and cuffs to match.

Although I’m not as familiar with Paradigm as with some brands, I’ve now heard a bunch of its loudspeakers and have learned one essential thing. It uses lots of cone area in its kit, albeit by slapping lots of midrangers into the towers, or by cramming a 10in woofer into the sort of box most normal people would only use for an 8in.