"In George Orwell's novel <I>1984</I>, everyone had a television in their home that monitored their every move," reads a June 26 report from the <A HREF="http://www.cme.org/access/index_acc.html">Center for Digital Democracy</A>, a Washington-based advocacy group. Orwell's good citizens dutifully watch, and are watched in turn, their every move tracked and recorded.

Just imagine if you could have this for your home theater system: <A HREF="www.ibm.com">IBM</A> announced last week the T220, which the company is calling the world's highest-resolution flat panel monitor. Unfortunately for us, IBM says that the new display will enable "photograph-quality" imaging for science, banking, engineering, publishing, medicine, and business-critical visualization tasks, and is not likely to appear in consumer living rooms anytime soon.

In case you hadn't noticed over the last year, the high-end-receiver war is on. With this donnybrook comes a blurring of the formerly distinct line between the bottom end of the separates market and the high end of the receiver market. It used to be simple: If you had X amount of money or less to spend, you bought a receiver; if you had more in your budget, you bought separates. Now, the competition for home theater dollars in the $2,500-to-$4,000 price range has become fierce, not only between receivers and separates but also amongst receivers themselves.

I love chocolate. No, I lust for chocolate. I'm incapable of walking down a candy aisle without lingering to look at the tight foil wrappings and the seductively enticing labels with their bold promises of the sinfully rich pleasure within. Sometimes, I stop, unable to control myself, and furtively fondle a bar of this darkly ambrosial substance that the Aztecs quite correctly considered the food of the gods. Certain no one is looking, I'll even bring a wrapped bar, more precious than its weight in gold, to my nostrils for a fleeting, stolen whiff of its wondrous scent. My mouth begins to water. My body shudders with excitement—an embarrassing moment of weakness in my struggle to remain pure.