The technological entertainment industry is now so geared around digital performance and high definition output that no peripheral worth its salt can afford to ignore this juggernaut revolution, which is sweeping old technologies aside with barely concealed disdain.

Recognising the inevitable, and that in the current climate consumers will want all the new advances without - relatively speaking - paying the Earth for them, Sony has crafted its new Bravia VPL-HW10 for audiences who have tasted the delights of HD Home Cinema and are hungry for more.

This sleek black machine, which measures 407.4 x 179.2 x 463.9mm and weighs in at approximately 10kg, is built around Sony's Bravia Engine 2 which uses SXRD (Silicon X-tal Reflective Display) technology to produce a fine-grained, full 1,920 x 1,080 HD image with a speedy 2.5ms response time. There are no fewer than eight separate stages of image enhancement so that it can optimise contrast and colour authenticity.

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Set-up is easy, with two HDMI inputs alongside Composite Video, S-Video, Component and a D-sub 15-pin input for PCs. It's also remarkably quiet, with a whispering 22dB noise level thanks to the use of new noise reduction systems. The 200W lamp produces 1,000 ANSI lumens with a throwing distance of 2.63m - 3.89m and a 16:9 screen size of 1m - 7.6m.

The All Range Crisp Focus (ARC-F) lens has a relatively modest 1.6x manual zoom but it has a high contrast ratio of 30,000:1, thanks to Sony's Advanced Iris 2 system which attempts to imitate the range of the human eye. An additional feature is a full screen panel alignment function which helps eliminate any coloured bordering at the edges of objects.

It's the colour in particular that stands out with this machine, as it supports x.v.Colour which is based on xvYCC, a new international standard for video that defines a colour space nearly two times wider than the existing sRGB standard.

However, if you do wish to adjust screen colours, the remote control includes Real Colour Processing, which allows a specific colour to be varied without altering the rest of the image. The difference really shows when you play back a Blu-ray film via the HDMI connection using the ‘24p True Cinema' function, when the results are almost indistinguishable from the original quality.

One other useful attribute is the Bravia Theatre Sync process which uses One Touch Play on the remote to automatically start up the film and the projector simultaneously, and the System Stand-By similarly shuts it all down again. Maybe next time it'll hand out the popcorn too.

If this is your first foray into HD Home Cinema projection then you could do a lot worse than this relatively reasonably priced Bravia with its superb colour reproduction and control.