Sony BDV-E880

Sony BDV-E880 review

Sony's BDV-E880, costs merely £400 and comprises a 5.1 Blu-ray home theatre system with 3D support and Sony's Bravia Internet Video Smart TV platform. Inside the box you find a pair of 25cm-tall surround speakers, a long skinny centre-channel cabinet and two alarmingly large tower speakers for the front left and right. They dominated my cabinet-mounted 40-inch TV, so owners of smaller screens take note. A downward-firing subwoofer, a connectable iPod dock and the main unit complete the lineup. The latter is a real design hit, with a sloping top panel and illuminated transport controls. It doesn't weigh much, but build quality seems solid. The back of the player/amp features two HDMI inputs, ARC-capable output, LAN port, digital and analogue audio inputs and jacks for the FM antenna and dinky mic that Sony provides to assist speaker setup. Wireless 'net connection is possible via the front-mounted USB port, but requires the purchase of an adaptor. My tests were done wired. Clunky start I ran into a few problems with the BDV-E880 when running a set-top box through it, as none of the audio options are viewable on screen when you're using the HDMI inputs. You have to use the main unit's front display and the unintuitive handset.