Hands-on with the Bowers and Wilkins Panorama soundbar and XT8 speaker

Remember the "groundbreaking new product" that Bowers & Wilkins promised us for CES? We wouldn't have expected it from the Abbey Road Studios-approved speaker brand, but it turned out to be the Panorama soundbar. It certainly will break some ground in pricing (and wallets) when it ships for $2,200 in March, though. The all-in-one speaker packs three amplifiers, plenty of inputs for your Dolby Digital and DTS sources (2 analog, 2 Toslink and a SPDIF coax), and selectable settings for tuning the virtual surround effect based on the wall surfaces and whether you mount the Panorama on a wall or shelf. Also on show was the new design of the XT-series speakers, with the top-to-bottom grille -- quite handsome, but unfortunately silent.

Hands-on with Bowers and Wilkins Panorama ssoundbar

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 10th 2009 7:52PM]

How do you intro a speaker without playing something through it? Lame.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 11th 2009 10:26AM]

Actually, it's über lame that they introduce a $2k sound bar with no HDMI. Seriously, it's 2009. No new audio product over $200 (even Pioneer understands) should lack PCM over HDMI inputs.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 11th 2009 11:51AM]

Adding HDMI to a soundbar will make it sound better like polishing a turd makes it less unsanitary.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 12th 2009 9:28AM]

Sooo... what about the XT8?

From googling I can't even tell how the XT8 is different than the XT4.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 14th 2009 1:32PM]

Thats hilarious. For 2200 bucks you can actually buy a real surround sound. Like going with klipsch or something. This is about as bose crap. High price low performance.