CES 2009

KEF's flagship speaker, the Muon, looks to be over 6 feet tall, is fashioned from 6mm thick, super formed aluminum. Only 100 pairs will be built for worldwide sales, and a pair will run you $140,000. Surround sound? No problem, just buy six. Add five Mark Levinson No.53 amps and you're good to go.

The new Mythos 9 ($800) from Definitive Technology may be used as an on-wall LCR speaker, or alternately as a center channel with Def Tech's Mythos STS Super Towers.

Why, it's NAD's first speaker line, the Viso Thirty bookshelf and center channel models. They've got titanium tweeters, four-inch polypropylene woofers, and a $699 pricetag (we need to clarify if that's per speaker).

Denon showed off their new line of AVRs, many of which feature advanced whole house networking solutions that can access music from iTunes, Windows Media 11 and music servers. Increased whole house networking capabilities will continue to be a major emphasis in Denon products.

HDMI Licensing LLC, who won a Technology and Engineering Emmy for their contribution of the HDMI™ single cable audio and video standard, has announced the development of a new HDMI specification beyond the current 1.3 version. While not final, it is expected that the new standard will include transfer of Ethernet over the new HDMI cable. The other significant addition will be an “audio return channel.” Currently when a source—say, your HD satellite—is connected directly to a TV, an optical audio cable must be connected to an AV receiver to hear your satellite programming in surround sound. This new bi-directional feature brings it back to a single connection that will send the sound back to AV receiver without the need for an additional cable. Woohoo! We’re getting closer to a single cable connection, I’m all for that type of simplicity. Go HDMI!

Panasonic has a wide range of new plasmas—and new LCDs, as well. The PZ85 series claims a peak contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, though I’m not sure you can measure this!