Panasonic SC-BTT490 review

The SC-BTT490 is Panasonic’s flagship mainstream all-in-one home cinema package. It might lack the same premium audio components of the more expensive BTT590, but it does have full-height front satellite speakers that are far easier to place in a room if you don’t want to wall mount them.

In comparison, the mug-sized rear satellites look fairly puny next to the towering 1.2m tall front speakers, but both use the same 6.5cm speaker drivers so there should be no difference in sound quality – even if the front channels receive more power from the internal amplifier. Each speaker, including the passive subwoofer, connects to the main unit with proprietary cables, although the speakers themselves have spring terminal connections, so extending them should be easy.

The main unit itself is barely bigger than a regular Blu-ray player, yet it still has room for a pop-out iPod dock, a front-facing USB port and an SDXC card reader. Its back panel connectivity is impressive too, having two HDMI inputs and one Audio Return Channel-supporting HDMI output for high-definition sources and a composite video output for older devices. Analogue RCA phono inputs and a single digital optical input take care of audio, and there’s also an Ethernet port, an FM radio antenna and a second USB port. Unfortunately, the rear USB port’s dedicated to Panasonic’s Skype camera, so we had to use the front port to play our test files.

Thankfully, file format support is excellent, with the BTT490 managing to play almost all of our test files. The only exception was WMV HD, but as this is rarely used any more. Integrated Wi-Fi means you won’t need to run an Ethernet cable to your TV to get online either.

Once connected, you’ll also be able to access Panasonic’s VIERA Connect online portal. It lets you access BBC iPlayer, Netflix and YouTube for streaming video, as well as Skype, Twitter and Facebook for social networking and a whole host of other services from smaller providers.

Switching from on-demand content to Blu-ray movies, the BTT490 continued to impress. Like Panasonic’s other Blu-ray players, there are plenty of image quality settings and speaker adjustments you can make to produce great audio. Panasonic’s all-in-one systems are typically some of the easiest to use, and the BTT490 is no exception, having a simple menu system and icon-based layout that makes changing settings both quick and easy.

Blu-ray discs load in less than 20 seconds and look fantastic on an HDTV, with Chroma processing, DVD upscaling and image sharpness adjustments giving films immediate impact. Contrast was excellent, preserving details that other players couldn’t reproduce, and even DVDs looked surprisingly detailed, despite the introduction of a few noise artefacts.

The tall front satellites are the perfect height for watching films on the sofa, which means the important front surround channels are pumped straight to your ears. The centre speaker always produced clear, audible speech, even during busier scenes, and the small subwoofer produced more than reasonable bass. We enjoyed enveloping surround sound at around two-thirds volume, with enough rumble during action sequences to add plenty of depth to films.

The main unit’s picture quality is superb, its Smart TV functions are comprehensive and its sound quality is top notch too. However, the smaller BTT290 costs around £150 less and nearly has all the same features. It almost has the same sound quality too, so if you don’t mind finding a shelf on which to put your speakers, you could save a fair amount.