Panasonic SC-PTX7 Jukebox Theater Audio System

Panasonic unveiled a multi-source, multi-room surround-sound system with an integrated high-capacity hard-drive music jukebox at CES today. The new model, SC-PTX7, also incorporates 1080p video conversion and Panasonic's twin-center 3.1 surround-sound speakers, which use vertically oriented dual center-channel drivers to precisely localize sound at the center of flat-panel, big-screen televisions.

The SC-PTX7 has an 80GB HDD which can store, organize and play music from a vast variety of digital and audio sources, perform onboard re-mastering of digital music files to restore frequencies lost during compression, features an advanced GUI navigation system for easy for quick and easy song finding and sorting, is XM Radio compatible, and allows different audio streams to be wirelessly transmitted to up to three rooms.

These systems provide a host of innovative features, such as the ability to automatically analyze songs and create play lists based on mood or energy level.

The next-generation performance and features of the Jukebox Theater are matched to the Panasonic's Twin-Center 3.1 surround sound speakers, designed to address the problem that the larger the screen gets, the farther a speaker mounted below or above it is from the display's vertical center and the more the sound output from that speaker seems to be coming from below or above the picture. Panasonic's twin-center design, with two center-channel streams are designed to meet in the center of a big-screen display to eliminate the unnatural sounding dialog common when traditional center-channel speakers are used with flat panel or rear-projection big screens.

The complete 3.1 speaker system shipped with the Jukebox Theater model includes bass-ported left and right speakers, center-channel speakers with computer-designed directional reflectors integrated into the left/right speaker enclosures, and a high-power, long-throw subwoofer.

The Panasonic Jukebox Theater system also features EZ-Sync HDAVI Control one-touch operation with Panasonic Plasma televisions, Dolby Virtual Speaker support, DTS decoding, and integrated HDMI, Ethernet, portable music player and XM Radio ready port.

The SC-PTX7 is expected to ship in April with an SRP of $799.95.

Information about Panasonic and its products is available at www.panasonic.com.