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Yamaha DVX-1000 2.1 home cinema system

Only three speakers but an eight-channel experience

It's also possible to select an Audio Direct mode which cuts the video circuitry out of the signal path and switches off the front panel illumination to lessen any possible audio interference. The DVX-1000 also has a compressed music enhancer to improve the quality of MP3 and WMA files. Other audio codecs supported are Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Pro Logic II and DTS Neo:6.

And there's a CD up-sampling function that doubles the CD sampling rate to 88.2kHz in an attempt to produce a smoother sound. Yamaha recons this takes the quality of an ordinary CD close to the quality of DVD Audio, and we'd have to say it's not far wrong. There's a 3.5mm jack and a dedicated USB port for portable players and Flash drives.

Vision performance is also of high quality. You can set the DVX-1000 to scale at 480i/p, 576i/p, 720p and 1080i/p resolutions, and a decently produced DVD fully up-scaled looks so good that a Blu-ray drive looks superfluous, especially while the disc price differential is still significant.

Yamaha DVX 1000 home cinema system

No need for a Blu-ray player with this boy?

DVD navigation is very pleasing - it's smooth and very quick. The ability to return to the point at which you left a disc, even if it has been ejected from the machine, is nice. The unit can remember the last ten discs in this way, and up to 40 discs can be 'locked' so that, for example, parents can prevent their kids from watching discs out of their age-range.

The unit can handle DivX and DivX Ultra video, and JPEG snaps on disc or USB stick. Connections at the rear of the head unit include an HDMI interface, Scart, optical digital in, component- and composite-video out, s-video out, analogue (aux) input and line out.

Verdict

The DVX-1000's price isn't the most competitive around, but to be fair, once you've spent some time with the machine you can see where the development and build money went. Its performance is so good that you feel you'll more than get your money’s worth over the years.

90%

Yamaha DVX-1000 2.1 home cinema system

This is one of the best 2.1 systems we've seen. It hits a pleasing note, providing the convenience of three speakers and genuinely good performance.
Price: £1000 RRP

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