Pioneer have announced a new all-in-one home theater system for design-conscious people: the LX01. It really stands out from the other systems with its all-black glossy finish. The minimalist design doesn’t mean it lacks features. In fact, I find them pretty impressive and more-than-enough for the regular user.

It has a main unit, a separate LCD display unit, a beefy subwoofer and 4 surround speakers. Also, it has a sleek touchscreen remote which, while looking simple, can control all of the many available features.

Read on for the technical details

This unit is meant to replace all those boxes around your TV. It has PVR functions, a DVD writer, it can upscale your DVDs to 1080p and deliver them through its HDMI connector, rip your music in lossless quality (hell, it even downloads album info from gracenote) and receive audio and video data from your DAP. There’s a 250 GB hard drive inside to store all your data.

The real treat however seems to be the audio system. As you’ve noticed, there are only 4 surround speakers. Many give negative comments regarding this, and I don’t understand why. People, have you never EVER thought how easy it is to reroute the center channel to the 2 front speakers? This way, you get rid of the center speaker (yea, try placing one on your plasma) AND you get better sound.

The speakers beam their sound towards the room and towards the roof. This way, a full sound is achieved, and the speaker placement becomes less important. Also, it is claimed that this way you can experience surround sound almost anywhere in the room.

The launch is scheduled for October, and the price is yet unknown. Found at crave.