HIGH-DEF CRED A nice side effect of everyone going gaga over 1080p displays is that 720p gear is more affordable than ever. Case in point: Sanyo's PLV-Z5 projector, which will fill your wall or screen with 100-inch HD images for less than 2 Gs.
Microsoft makes it easy to morph your Xbox 360 into a high-def movie machine, thanks to its HD DVD add-on. Just plug it into your console, and you're ready to go. And at $200, it's less than half the price of the cheapest standalone HD DVD player.
CHEST-THUMPING SOUND You'd better be damn comfortable in your manliness before you hand your credit card over to buy a pair of FM-45s. The tower speakers from RBH stand almost 4 feet tall, and each has a pair of 8-inch woofers for intimidatingly deep bass. You may need to get the optional silver grilles ($70) just to make them look a bit more dainty.
FLAT CAT Other subwoofers may laugh at the SC-IW's unconventional design, but installers will love it, since the slim sub (3.4 inches thick) is made to fit perfectly inside a 2 x 4-foot studded wall. The driver module (that's the small part) can fire up or down, with a scoop aiming the bass into the room.
SCALE IT UP After laying down some serious coin for a 1080p HDTV, you're going to want to make sure you feed that puppy nothing but the good stuff. That means con-verting all your video signals to that grandest of HD formats, which just happens to be the solitary mission of Gefen's Home Theater Scaler.
GET YOUR TWEAK ON A first-ever for the high-end company, McIntosh's VP1000 video processor (top) has the goods to deliver two separate 1080p signals via HDMI. Control freaks will delight at the multitude of adjustments: Each input can store different picture settings for both output zones.
May the flash be with you! For daily data transport, Star Wars fanatics can now stay on target with USB flash drives that are both practical and whimsical. Mimoco's Star Wars mimobots include a storm trooper as well as Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and R2-D2 & all designed to the exacting standards of Lucas Licensing.
CLEAR CENTER Nothing that special about supermodel-thin speakers (3.5 inches) made to match flat TVs . . . unless they're designed to give you three channels of sound from just two speakers.
TRICKS FOR THE TRADE Denon threw that conspicuous "CI" into this receiver's product number to let you know it has some special tricks for custom installers. Trick 1: Source renaming, so your front panel doesn't just have to say "DVD" - call your player "Philips 721" or even "Ralph" if you want.
MEDIA À LA MOD Out of the thousands of products, hundreds of pimped-out vehicles, and dozens of partially clad... um, booth models at the annual SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) show in Las Vegas in November, VizuaLogic's VMOD stood out from all the hubbub.
KALEID-O-SET In the modern TV world of huge screens and off-the-scale resolution, color matters more than ever. The palette in Mitsubishi's 57-inch 1080p set is run by a 6-Primary Color System, which creates the "subtractive" colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) directly instead of mixing red, green, and blue.