Format War ’06: Panasonic wants to paint your living room blue

It’s starting to remind me of one of those battle scenes from Lord of the Rings out there: armies massing on the borders, thumping drums, um, elves . Just when things were starting to look bleaker for Blu-Ray, what with the Sony delays and the appearance of Toshiba’s HD DVD home recorder, who should come swooping in like the screaming eagles but Panasonic and their Blu-Ray-based home theater system.

The centerpiece of this massive undertaking is a $1300 Blu-Ray player, but Panasonic’s going for the modular approach. You can mix and match the other components, including a $1000 receiver, and a $3000 set of speakers (pictured). We’re talking $5300 right there, but of course you’re not going to want to watch that on a puny 27″ CRT television, are you? So just to complete the picture, the big P will be releasing a 65-inch plasma simultaneously, which is expected to ring in at around $8000.

Personally, my big screen experience still involves sitting about six inches from my 13″ MacBook screen. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper, for sure.

[via Digital World Tokyo ]