Of all the available video display technologies,there is a general perception that projectors are the trickiest of them all.They need a screen,which generally is bolted to a wall or ceiling,much to the chagrin of Mrs projector owner; the way they're wired makes them look much like a junction box otherwise found under the stairs in the form of the house fuse box,and they need serious and largely incomprehensible tweaking,tuning and general mollycoddling.Lamp replacement costs also tend to add to concern.

This model from Epson may not have an answer to this last problem, but it is one of the first of a new generation of go anywhere,easy to use home cinema one-stop-shop video solutions.

Following hard on the heels of the Optoma MovieTime DV10,it looks and works like a projector,but it also includes its own internal JVC-sourced DVD player, stereo amplifier and speakers.It can be used without any further accessories if you're content to project onto a white painted wall, though a screen will give better results.It will play a variety of other disc types too,including CDs,MP3 compilations and others.

The projector section of the EMP-TWD1 is natively widescreen, but it is a low resolution device; the sparse crop of 854 x 480 pixels being less than required for full PAL DVD-Video 576 line playback without scaling (ie trimming down). Like most LCDs, there are broad black lines around each pixel,which has consequences which will be covered in further depth later.

With its wide throw lens, the Epson is designed to be used on a table in front of the viewing plane, but just in case you're in any doubt, the disc loading drawer and its display, and the loudspeakers (which of course should not be obstructed) are on the back panel: all interconnections apart from the headphone socket are on the front alongside the lens.

The internal sound provision is suitable for stereo playback, though a subwoofer can be attached to plug the rather obvious low frequency gap. It is possible to use headphones instead of the speakers,but if you're after the full multichannel deal, a digital optical output is available which can be connected to a Dolby Digital or DTS amplifier.