Panasonic SC-HTB520

Panasonic SC-HTB520 review

The Panasonic SC-HTB520's sheer presence will spoil the immaculate appearance of your TV on its stand, but with a Hobbit-esque height of less than 8cm it shouldn't affect viewing or block the IR receiver for your TV. Should it need to, the SC-HTB520 can also pass on commands from your TV's remote control to the screen via an IR blaster. A much more elegant solution is to mount both screen and bar on a wall, and the SC-HTB520 is supplied with two brackets for this purpose. Nest-sized The 120W gloss black subwoofer is as attractive as these things get, plus it can be squirreled away out of sight behind the sofa, thanks to its wi-fi connection to the main unit. The straightforward two-way, two-speaker, bass reflex layout of the main unit is faintly visible behind the non-removable grille that covers the entire front. With no LCD display to use, trying to balance the subwoofer and main unit's separate volume controls proves to be a bit of a lark. The SC-HTB520 isn't interested in anything analogue, wearing its digital stripes with pride. With two v1.4 HDMIs and a digital optical audio input, the idea is that you route sound and picture from a Blu-ray or DVD deck to the HDMI input and optically connect from your screen's digital output.