LG HB354BS review

The HB354BS is also profile 2.0-ready, which means you can access the latest online interactive features. To do this, you'll need to connect an Ethernet cable at the rear. Then you'll be able to access the wealth of online content designed to support Blu-ray movies. And, yes, we were being sarcastic -- we've yet to see anything on BD-Live that's worth your valuable time. Still, the future could well be bright for this system.

Performance
As with all Blu-ray players, we put the HB354BS through our speed-testing process, designed to rank each player against its competitors. We expected the machine to load our test disc in around the same time as the BD370. In fact, it managed the task in 42 seconds -- significantly faster than the BD370, which took 47 seconds. That puts the HB354BS level with the PS3.

With one win tucked under its little blu belt, we couldn't help wonder what its music performance would be like. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, we think this player is likely to be popular with students heading off to university -- and students love of music is rivalled only by that of beer. Secondly, music is generally a weak area on devices set up to play movie soundtracks.

The terrific news is that we really liked the sonic performance of the HB354BS in every way. Music was, as we had hoped, crisp and clear. At first we struggled to balance the bass, with built-in sound modes either pushing it up too loud or not boosting it enough. Happily, it's easy enough to tweak the sub level yourself, which we did, and we were very happy with the results.

Once we'd finished with our selection of trance and happy hardcore hits, we moved on to films. Plonking xXx: State of the Union into the tray, we were pleased with overall sound. The HB354BS doesn't produce as smooth a sound as our reference Onkyo system and Klipsch speakers, and sometimes sounds slightly harsh, but, even so, this system is likeable and a decent performer. Picture quality is also great.

There was only really one thing we didn't like, and that's the lack of extra speaker outputs for upgrading to 5.1- or 7.1-channel surround sound later. We know that LG does this to upsell you it's higher-end model, but adding the extra terminals would be welcome. We've seen Onkyo take this approach, seemingly understanding that people will still upgrade to a more impressive system later, when funds allow.

Conclusion
We like the LG HB354BS. A package like this, priced sensibly, will have a wide appeal to plenty of people. The sound quality from the system is good, although we don't think it's as smooth or well rounded as our reference system. That said, the HB354BS is a fraction of the price of that system. We think anyone who buys the HB354BS will be very pleased with it.

Our only regret is that it's not possible to upgrade the package to 5.1- or 7.1-channel surround sound at a later date -- a wasted opportunity in our opinion. Other than that, we'd say this is a great option for those with limited space, and well worth consideration.

Edited by Charles Kloet