It's amazing what you can get for your money nowadays. It's not too long ago that £200 would buy you a DVD player and that was your lot.

But now it seems that you can't walk into your local supermarket to buy a chicken and some milk without being badgered into adding a mini system, DVD recorder or even an LCD television to your weekly shop.

Mustek's R320A Plus is a prime example of that market trend, offering everything you need for a fully-functioning home cinema system bar the screen and all for just a couple of DVDs over two hundred quid. It has to be a bargain.

Well for starters, let's have a look at what you actually get for your money.The R320A Plus system comprises a main control unit into which Mustek has managed to squeeze a DVD recorder (of the R/RW variety), a 200W 5.1 channel amplifier and a brace of non-digital tuners for TV and radio.

Outside the box you get five rather sad-looking satellite speakers and a passive subwoofer. You also get all the cables you need to wire this lot up and a blank DVD R and a RW disc.

Build quality

The build quality of the system itself is about par for the course at this kind of price. In other words not great, but you have to keep telling yourself: it's virtually free, it's virtually free, over and over again.

The main unit itself is long and thin, like a stand-alone DVD recorder, with a centre-mounted disc drawer and some unresponsive buttons dotted around the place.

Around the back there's a healthy smattering of connection options, including component video and a brace of Scarts, only one of which is RGB capable, so no recording off Sky. Colour-coded springclip terminals for connecting up the speakers round off the tally.

While this is all well and good, neither the supplied manual nor the 'layout of speaker box' addendum show the novice user - who we suppose is buying this - a picture of the back panel or explains how they are supposed to connect everything.

All you get is a picture of a room with some speakers in it and some quick guides to playback and recording.This really isn't good enough.