My wife, bless her heart, gave me a home theater for my birthday (well, the reality of marriage being what it is, she really just gave me a card that said, "Go buy yourself a home theater..."). read more...

Here's a perfect gift for that Blu-ray or HD DVD-enabled muggle on your Christmas list. Hitting both high-def disc formats for the very first time this week are all five Harry Potter movies. read more...

Sandisk‘s Sansa TakeTV product aims to make it super simple to view videos from your PC on your television. It comes with a 4 or 8GB flash drive, a dock, a remote control, and a power cable - that’s all you need. Drag and drop files onto the drive from your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer, take the USB stick and dock it, and you are ready to watch. You can see the TakeTV in this episode of Unboxing Live:

The BD-P1200 from Samsung is a nice step up from last year's BD-P1000 player. It offers more features at a lower cost. There are nice bookmarking features, DVD upconverting, and a nice backlit remote control. There's also an Ethernet port, which allows for simple firmware updates. Of course, the fact that it takes 20 seconds to load a disc is no fun, but that is typical of Blu-ray and HD DVD players across the board.

The past year has seen a number of announcement of video download services. Big names like Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix among them. But we have yet to see one that has the ultimate combination of content choice, quality video and usability. The wait may be over. In September of this year, there was a new entry into the movie downloaded market: VUDU. Unlike the services mentioned above, VUDU is implemented as a hardware device rather than a software program you install on a PC or laptop. read more...

Back in August, when it was first revealed that discount manufacturer Venturer Electronics planned to release a $199 HD DVD player in time for the holidays, that price seemed almost unfathomable. Now that Venturer's SHD7000 HD DVD player has finally hit stores (amidst a series of price drops for Toshiba's lower-end HD DVD players) its price tag isnt quite the headline it once was, but Venturer's distribution partnership with retail giant Wal-Mart is still likely to make this one a hot item as we head into the holidays. read more...

After checking out B&W's 685 stereo speakers for more than a month, I'm truly impressed. These mid-size speakers are perfect for a roomy bookshelf or on speaker stands, and they handled all the music I could throw at them with precision and superb richness. Movies still benefit from a decent subwoofer, but most acoustic music lovers can do without one in a small living room. At $600 a pair, these are definitely one of the best speaker values ever. <!--more--> I've now spent over a month comparing the new 685's against the larger B&W DM610i’s I’ve been using for the last several years. I tested both pairs of speakers using a Marantz S-5000 receiver and B&W’s . My trusty 610i’s are great, but in some ways I prefer the newer model's more aggressive sound at low to moderate volumes in my 12 x 11-foot living room, not to mention the more compact size. Each 685 has a beef y 6.5-inch woofer with a fixed bullet-shaped centerpiece, as well as a 1-inch aluminum dome tweeter — they look pretty hip without the grille covers on, too. They’re rated at 8 ohms impedance, so they can be powered by most receivers. I sat them atop a pair of primo B&W speaker stands and let em fly. Initially, before the “burning in” process of mellowing out the speaker cone and suspension, the 685s sounded a little on the shrill side, but this subsided within about a couple days. They have strong mids at any volume, where the 610i’s seemed to drop out at lower levels. After the burn-in, the highs are crisp but roll off just enough to avoid being harsh. Since the 685s don’t reach as deep into the bass as the 610i’s, I set up a Cambridge SoundWorks passive subwoofer, which gave the overall sound a very accurate and natural bottom end. But even without the sub, the 685s sound superb for complex music thanks to plenty of detail and smoothness across registers. The sub is a must for movies, though. I tested the 685s with plenty of acoustic jazz, including Miles Davis’s <em>Round About Midnight</em> and <em>The Complete Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong</em>. Everything sounded surprisingly full given the speakers’ relatively small size. The bass didn’t sound tubby and there were no gaping holes in the mids. Ride cymbals sounded very lively but not shrill, and I could easily hear the grit in the horn sounds on Miles’s mid-1950s recording. Classical music like Bela Bartok’s Piano Concertos 1, 2, and 3 comes through exceptionally well, thanks in part to the speakers’ ability to maintain excellent sound even at low levels. There’s usually a lot of dynamic range in classical recordings, and it’s important that quieter passages sound as good as louder sections. The 685s deliver. If you listen to a lot of organ music or tracks with tympani, however, a subwoofer will make sure you hear everything down to the deepest tones. On bass-driven albums like DJ Shadow’s <em>The Outsider</em> and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ <em>Stadium Arcadium</em>, all the individual parts stood out, but it was still clear that the low end is the moneymaker on these recordings. This is one area where the 685s benefit a lot from a subwoofer — even a simple passive one, though a powered sub may fit bass-head tastes even better. Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” had plenty of thump, and the imaging on some DVD-Audio tracks from Queen’s <em>A Night At the Opera</em> was excellent for speakers in this price range. Classic and modern rock both have plenty of screech, grit, and wail; the 685s really help separate out all the layers in tracks by studio-magic bands like Led Zep and The Who, and modern masterpieces like Interpol’s <em>Antics</em> have all the depth of a classic Floyd album. Movies like <em>The Matrix</em> and <em>Hero</em> really need help from a subwoofer, but dialog-oriented flicks like <em>Broken Flowers</em> sound as full as they need to with or without. They also integrated nicely into my Cambridge SoundWorks surround speaker set as front speakers, blending smoothly with the center channel (though this is as much a function of setup as speaker quality). At roughly $600 a pair, these are a solid investment if you’re starting to get serious about your home audio setup. For movies and music with especially deep bass, a subwoofer is a must, but you’ll be well rewarded. - Mike Kobrin

DirecTV began shipping its HR20 line of HD DVRs last fall, and has recently announced the availability of the next generation HR21. There's not much of a difference between the two, other than the HR21 being available in black, so I'm essentially reviewing both here. The other key difference is that the HR21 does not include any local tuners. So if you receive your locals over the air, you might want to hold on to your HR20 and not upgrade to the HR21. read more...