Tech Eye: Thinking inside the box

Then she would round it off with a game of bingo, maybe some dancing or a spot of violence at the Saturday night bare-knuckle free-for-all in the village square.

First, however, she had to deal with the problem of her screaming progeny, which meant that TechEye often spent its Saturday nights following a delicious trail of cunningly placed fish-heads before finding itself locked up in a large wooden box (with airholes if it was summer) while Ma TechEye was off filling her gap with gin.

Hence it is with some suspicion that we typically give large boxes the hairy eyeball. But not in this case. Behold Yamaha's YSP-1. Boxes don't come much bigger, and while TechEye appreciated the rustic charms of the air-holes and bucket Mother furnished our weekend home in, it wouldn't have minded having the 42 digital amplifiers, 40 sound beam drivers and two woofers that Yahama have packed in here. But what on earth do the Star Trek nerds in Yamaha's labs hope to achieve with that lot? Just 5.1-channel surround sound in one box. That means surround sound with no mass of wires and speakers cluttering up your digs, which can only lead TechEye to the conclusion that witchcraft is afoot.

Unlike TechEye's box, however, it ain't cheap and along with the roughly zł.4,000 you need to go home with the YSP-1, you'll need a bit extra for the 42-inch TV Yamaha reckons you need to put over this thing so it looks good. But if you've frittered away most of your savings on the sure thing in the 3:30 at Chepstow that turned out to be a blind, three-legged donkey that was only fit for the glue factory, fear not. The YSP-1 has a little brother, in the form of the YSP-800, which has 22 speakers but doesn't skimp on the sound and will go back to your place for the rather more reasonable sum of around zł.3,500.