New Products

WINDOWS 1080P If you loved Legos as a kid, a Media Center PC will fulfill your need to build stuff in a grown-up, home theater kind of way. Niveus's Rainier, an "entry-level" model in the Summit series, gives you unprecedented tools: an HD DVD drive and an HDMI output capable of feeding your display 1080p video.

SOUND COUNTS It's tough to pick the perfect home theater gear: You want something that'll impress your A/V-junkie friends but still be easy enough for your girlfriend to use. Cambridge Audio's Azur 640R receiver comes at you with serious audiophile cred - seven discrete 100-watt amps, all well-isolated from the digital processor and input stages.

DirecTV's Titanium plan gives you everything the satcaster offers: up to 10 receivers, more than 250 regular and HD channels, unlimited pay-per-view (without paying for it), 70 XM satellite radio channels, "personalized concierge customer service, 24/7," and more.

SINGULAR SOUND Ever thought you'd see the day when you could harness the sound of a home theater from a single box? That day is today if you have the ZVOX 325, which crams an entire speaker system - amps, drivers, and sound processing - into one 17-inch-wide component.

BAR NONE You can't stand black bars on your screen, but you still want to watch movies as the directors intended. DVDO's VP20 video processor might offer you a decent compromise, as its Precision Video Scaling II can scale the horizontal and vertical aspects of the picture independently.

MORE SCREEN, LESS SET Got space issues with your TV? Before you go running to a flat-panel, have a look at this DLP from Samsung that's just barely over 10 inches deep. That's thin enough to put on your bedroom dresser, and the ultrathin bezel will ensure you see nothing but the 1,280 x 720-pixel (720p) screen.

CLEAR SHOT You'll be able to capture detail that most other camcorders never see when you shoot footage with Canon's HV10. Everything is recorded in the 1080i high-def format thanks to a 1,920 x 1,080-pixel CMOS image sensor, said to be quicker on the draw and more power-efficient than typical CCD sensors. It probably gets more dates, too.