Moving Up A Peg Pioneer has a long history with audio products. In recent times the company has diversified to include DJ consoles and portable speakers to keep abreast of the times, but the core of their business revolves around home theater related products such as the Pioneer HTZ-HW929BD. This is a home cinema system and an upgrade to the older HTZ-HW919BD system which we have previously reviewed approximately a year ago. Design and Looks Besides some simple cosmetic changes, the design principles from the HTZ-HW919BD have been carried forward to the new product. Aesthetics of the product are still drab black and somewhat bland. The HTZ-HW929BD is also a three-piece, bundled home theater solution and comprises of the XV-BD922FSW Blu-ray Disc Receiver, S-BD922HW Sound Wing Bar Type Speaker System and the S-BD922SW Subwoofer. Most modern sound bar systems are two-piece systems where the Blu-ray player is integrated with the speakers in one long bar. However, the upward facing Sound Wing system means that the aforementioned integration is not possible with the Pioneer product, because one of its design attributes is to keep the Sound Wing thin and sleek. Because of the three-piece configuration, the new product still suffers from some of the shortcomings of the older sibling. For example, setting up is still a hassle and cabling is hard to manage. We expected the HTZ-HW929BD to address some of these issues somewhat and we're a little disappointed that these niggling matters still persist. S-BD922HW Sound Wing Bar Type Speaker System The interesting fact about the S-BD922HW Sound Wing Bar Type Speaker System for the Pioneer HTZ-HW929BD is that its dimensions (900mm x 66mm x 93mm) and weight (1.6kg) are exactly the same as the S-BD919HW HVT Bar-Type Speaker System of the Pioneer HTZ-HW919BD. In fact we initially suspect that both devices were entirely identical. However a look at the power output of 150 W shows that there actually is a difference in the internal circuitry of the S-BD922HW Sound Wing speaker system. The old S-BD919HW HVT bar-type speaker of the Pioneer HTZ-HW919BD system had a power rating of 180 W. While having a lower power output isn't usually a positive sign, there might be other design aspects that led to the change in power output. We will see how the change affects the audio quality in our testing segment on the following page.