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Home Cinema Choice 166 now on sale

The latest issue of Home Cinema Choice is on sale and even if I say so myself, it’s a  corker. There’s no shortage of interesting reviews, plus coverage from CES 2009 and (ironically) my in-depth preview (sic) of Pioneer’s next generation of Kuro picture processing technology, codenamed Fuga. This, of course, will now probably never see the light of day, given that Pioneer no longer plans to introduce any more screens once its current range sells through.

It just goes to show how quickly the company made the decision to pull from the market. The interview was done in Japan in December and clearly Kuro was still in development. The decision to pull out must have been made by the Pioneer board during the first few weeks of January. Still, it makes for an interesting insight into what might have been. A shorter version can be read online here.

The issue also features some fabulous photography. I really don’t think there’s any magazine being published that shoots large kit (specifically 5.1 speaker packages) as deliciously as we do. Everything just looks so damn tempting. And the writing continues to shine. Richard Stevenson’s review of Sony’s BDP-S5000ES Blu-ray player is particularly great. It makes rival reviews of the same hardware in other mags look thin, superficial and really rather dull.