LG HB354BS review: LG HB354BS

The LG HB354BS Blu-ray home-cinema system comes stuffed with cool features. It's an iPod dock, MP3 player and media streamer all in one. It's also got a 2.1-channel surround-sound speaker system, making it ideal for people just starting to get Blu-ray fever.

8.3

LG HB354BS

The Good

Good sound quality; convenient; stylish.

The Bad

Lack of upgrade path to 5.1- or 7.1-channel surround sound.

The Bottom Line

The LG HB354BS is a very good piece of equipment that's been designed well for a specific target audience. We think it will sell particularly well with students -- as an all-in-one package, it's incredibly handy. Even though it's aimed at the lower end of the market, it's a well-built machine with decent-enough sound quality and speedy disc-load times -- something that's always pleasing

LG has yet to announce the pricing of the HB354BS, but we'll update this review as soon as it's been revealed.

Design
The main part of the HB354BS is, as you'd imagine, the Blu-ray player. It's larger than most modern players, but, considering it has much more built in, we're not really surprised. It's not unattractive though, finished in glossy black, with a large volume control on the far right. There's also a small and basic screen that sits next to the slide-out iPod dock.

Also on the front, you'll find some funky touch controls for navigating around your Blu-ray movies, and there's a USB socket for accessing MP3s, photos and certain types of video.

Around the back, you'll find a host of inputs and outputs. Because this player can act as a surround-sound decoder and amp for other sources, you get a pair of HDMI inputs for passing HD audio to the HB354BS. There's also a pair of digital audio inputs -- one optical, one coaxial -- and regular analogue stereo RCA jacks. An Ethernet socket is also provided to handle all the Blu-ray interactivity that BD-Live offers.

In terms of outputs, there's a single HDMI socket and three sets of speaker terminals for connecting the stereo speakers and the subwoofer.

The speakers themselves are pretty funky-looking. The subwoofer is fairly large, but it's designed to be tucked out of sight somewhere. The two stereo speakers are, on the other hand, utterly tiny. It all comes together well, making for a stylish and likeable package. It's certainly had people in the CNET UK office drooling.

Features
Unlike LG's standalone BD370, the HB354BS doesn't have the same comprehensive media-playback support. This time around, there's no MKV playback, with the USB socket only allowing access to MP3s, JPEGs and certain video formats. But you do get support for the usual suspects, including both Xvid and DivX, which will please people who get video over the Internet.

The iPod dock is centrally located. You simply push it gently, and a tray springs out that supports your beloved Apple MP3 player. If you're not an iPod owner, there's a set of RCA jacks at the back that you can connect another MP3 player to.

The dual HDMI inputs on the back should come in handy for connecting other video sources you might have. Doing this will give you access to the improved sound that the HB354BS can offer over your TV. This sort of thing will be really useful to you if you have a media streamer or other HDMI-equipped device, like an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

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