Harman Kardon unveils 2009 home cinema range

Harman Kardon BDP 10

However, details have now reached us of the new AV products heading to the UK this summer, starting with the £600 BDP 10 Blu-ray player which is due in the shops later this month.

The BDP 10 is Profile 2.0 out of the box so supports BD-Live interactivity, upscales standard DVDs to 1080p, has 1080/24fps video resolution and plays MP3, WMA and DiVX files.

There's a USB input on the front panel, and round the back you'll find an Ethernet socket, one coaxial and one optical digital output, a stereo analogue output, composite video output and an HDMI 1.3a connection that handles all the high-definition audio codecs and PCM soundtracks.

Multichannel receivers due in July
If you fancy a matching Harman Kardon multichannel receiver to go with the Blu-ray player, the 7.2 Harman Kardon AVR 760 (£1700) and 7.1 AVR 660 (£1300) will be available in July.

Both models include Dolby Volume control, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding, Faroudja DCDi Cinema video processing and upscaling, and multiroom audio capability with A-BUS connectivity.

Each comes with Harman Kardon's newly developed high-definition, full colour, multi-language on-screen menu system that uses pictures and text to help users set up their home cinema system correctly.

EZSet/EQII auto set-up and room calibration is standard on both models, as is Harman Kardon's Bridge II iPod dock. You also get four HDMI inputs and one HDMI output.

Key differences on the AVR 760 are a higher power output – 7 x 85W against the AVR 660's 7 x75W – and a more up-to-date version of the Faroudja video processor/upscaler.