With imposing floor-standing speakers and a super-slim main unit, the TH-S9 looks considerably more up-market than its price suggests. It's the first one-box system we've seen with a memory card slot, for playing music and photos stored on CD and MMC memory cards.

DVD-audio playback is also on board, along with Dolby Digital, DTS and Dolby Pro-Logic II processing, and top-quality pictures can be sent via component outs. Both pictures and sound are hugely enjoyable, with the amount of bass produced by the compact sub particularly worthy of note.