The Panasonic SC-BT100 Blu-ray home theater system, first announced at CES 2008, is supposed to be available later this spring at an unconfirmed price. It seems to have popped up on the J&R website already for pre-order priced at $999.95. Not a bad price for a higher-end home theater system with Blu-ray playback.

The SC-BT100 system’s key features:

• Blu-ray profile 1.1 for picture-in-picture viewing
• 7.1 channel ready (meaning you actually have to purchase an extra couple of speakers and a wireless transceiver to actually make it a 7.1 channel system)
• five disc changer
• SD card slot (for digital media playback
• wireless rear speakers

The system has a few lacking areas as well. Profile 1.1 is a step behind Profile 2.0/BD Live which enables more interactive features and internet connectivity straight from Blu-ray disc titles. The SC-BT100 only plays back iPod video via a low-res composite output and its pretty barren in the connectivity area.

At $1000, this is a better deal than many, but we’ll have to see the price drop substantially before we run out and purchase the Panasonic SC-BT100.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 am and is filed under News, Panasonic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.