Having shown off a brace of new products briefly at CES, it was time for Arcam to showcase its new products more thoroughly to the European press, at a swanky club called The Hospital in the heart of London’s Covent Garden.
The most significant launch for Arcam this season is the Solo Movie 5.1, the one-box home cinema system that the company does for home cinema what the Solo does for hi-fi. Supporting DVD-Audio and SACD as well as CD and DVD-Video, the Solo Movie 5.1 also includes five discrete 50W amplifiers, a DAB/FM tuner, excellent connectivity and HDMI output, upscaling the DVD picture to 1080i HDTV pictures. Arcam’s Brand Manager Geoff Meads played the Solo Movie 5.1 through a Pioneer plasma TV and 5.1 channels of Monitor Audio equipment, the Solo Movie 5.1 looks and sounds excellent. Proof that DVD is not dead yet, the Solo Movie 5.1 will challenge HD DVD and Blu-ray for many years to come.
The Solo and Solo Movie 5.1 can both benefit from plugging into Arcam’s new rDock. Designed to connect Apple’s iPod to hi-fi systems, the rDock allows the front panel display of the Solo to replicate the information on the iPod. Better still, the rDock does not automatically charge the iPod’s batteries; leaving an iPod running off its own batteries both sounds better and helps improve battery life.
Also on demonstration was the forthcoming MS250 MusicFile server. With an onboard 400GB hard drive (capable of storing 640 uncompressed or 4800 compressed CDs) and the possibility of connecting terabytes of external storage, along with an ability to deal with internet radio sources and downloading compilations to CD-R, this flexible, good-sounding music server will be the mainstay of custom install and alpha geek systems the world over.
Finally, the company showed – but did not demonstrate – two new universal players (the DV135 and DV139) and a home cinema receiver (the AVR280). The universal players are Arcam’s foot-soldiers in the forthcoming HD-Disc format war, featuring 1080i upscaling, the latest chips and support for the current crop of DVD and SACD formats (DVD-Audio and SACD in stereo only). The top of the DiVA range, the DV139 is said to offer ‘Near-HD’ picture from existing DVDs. Meanwhile, the 80W, 7.1 channel AVR280 uses technology developed in Arcam’s FMJ AV9 and DiVA AVP700 processors, and includes 2x switchable 1080p-ready HDMI sockets and up-conversion of analogue sources to component/RGB. Like all the new DiVA products – and the Solo Movie 5.1 – the AVR280 is fully compliant with custom install technology, sporting 12v triggers and a RS232 port. In short, it looks like being a great all-rounder.