Panasonic has nailed its colours to the mast on high-definition disc formats and those colours are blue - well, Blu to be precise. Its first Blu-ray disc player, the DMP-BD10, is in the shops and a partnering AV amplifier that matches both cosmetically and technically makes a lot of sense. Enter the SA-XR700, an AV receiver as radical as Blu-ray tech itself.
For starters you have to grasp a philosophy based on a no-interference policy on the video side but high-tech digital engineering and audiophile components on the audio.
So while the SA-XR700 has simple pass-through 1080p HDMI connections without upscaling, up-conversion or even an onscreen display (no, really, it doesn't have an onscreen display!), it does have very clever all-digital class-D multiple-amping technology and frankly wacky audio components such as Pure Water capacitors.
Now, as The Oracle from The Matrix might say, this will really bake your noodle: The Advanced Dual Amp drive automatically couples any spare channels in parallel to the main front L/R amplification to boost dynamic headroom and, claims Panasonic, enhance realism and ambience in movie sound tracks.
Better still, you can re-assign the surround back output to bi-amp the front channels and let the SA-XR700 Dual-Amp the bass output using the rear-channel power when you switch to stereo. Hey, I warned you it was complex - but the clever upshot is that two-channel stereo output utilises nearly all of the Panasonic's combined power and headroom.
The audio niceties continue with HDMI connections that offer full specification 8-channel PCM input from, of course, a Blu-ray player and 192KHz/24bit conversion of incoming analogue signals to a digital stream prior to amplification.
The machine is also equipped with Panasonic's HDAVI control, meaning when connected to other HDAVI-enabled products, namely Panasonic's BD player and some TVs, they all work seamlessly from the same remote with plenty of one-touch features.
The result of all this digital-ness is an amplifier the size and weight of a DVD player that runs as cool as a cucumber and yet is claimed to push some 560W of grunt when required.
