Fred Manteghian

So here I sit, my furniture all rearranged like an overcrowded antique store, just so I can be in the sweet spot. It is speaker review time again at the Manteghians.' It takes a long time to break out and set up speakers, and you've lots of boxes to deal with. But the simplicity of a speaker is what is most appealing. No HDMI to DVI handshaking problems, no video cross-coding issues, no 3:2 pulldown. You just sit down and listen to music and watch movies. Of course, it's only enjoyable when the speakers in question sound great – like this Definitive Technology Mythos system does.

As I leave Denver after three days of being under the gun to pump out show reports (don't worry fans, it was only friendly fire), I can sit back and shoot for the bigger picture.

Somebody slap me, I must be having a nightmare. Didn't we just go through a format war? Didn't Toshiba just <a href=" http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/251617/Toshiba_Loses_its_Shirt_Wit... target="new">get the living crap beat out of them</a> trying to push the HD DVD format down the throats of a world that thinks a) Sony is better (who knew you could get so much mileage out of "Trinitron") and b) people prefer blue disc cases to red ones (<a href="http://joehallock.com/edu/COM498/preferences.html" target="new">no really!</a>).

<span style="float:left;color:#D4D4C7;font-size:100px;line-height:70px;padding-top:2px;font-family: Times, serif, Georgia;">F</span>or less than half the price that my BMW dealer wants to hook my iPod to the 530i's stereo, you can use Belkin's <a href="http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=257270" target=new>TuneBase FM for iPod</a> to hear your music collection through your car's FM radio. It's not an original idea and it's not a first, but it is extremely well designed and implemented. For the most part.