New Products

ROCK ON Are you still dragging your old boombox out to the backyard for your barbecues? Son, it's time for an upgrade. StereoStone's DaVinci Cinema Rock speaker can fill your patio with sweet sounds without messing up the outdoor ambience, thanks to its rocky camouflage, available in seven colors or your own custom color.

It really is a pit stop when you park your 'Pod in Corgi's Nissan Silvia iCar ($35). Yes, we're talkin' that Corgi, the British maker of die-cast scale-model cars, celebrating its 50th anniversary. Here, you get a 1:24-scale Silvia atop stereo speakers.

$400 Pro- $795, 1200C- $2,195

RGPC's staple device is the four outlet 400 Pro, and it stands out in a very densely crowded category as a no BS product that actually works. Inside each RGPC is a large inductor core, or choke, and a fast-blo fuse. Unlike so many of the surge protectors or line conditioners out there the RGPC is wired in parallel with the incoming AC, which means there's no current limiting, and components don't have to be plugged directly into the RGPC units to receive the full effect. The RGPC simply has to be plugged into an outlet on the same circuit as your gear. Several RGPC units can be "star clustered" in groups for improved performance, and the 1200 Custom is in fact two 400 Pro devices in a single box with 12 outlets. Inductive power filtering is becoming very popular in many high-end products, and the results that can be reaped from the RGPC devices with both audio and video systems can be noticeable, if not staggering (especially with power hungry components like CRTs and plasmas screens). RGPC devices are the only PLC devices in SB's reference system.

FULLY ARMED That sweet flat-panel TV you just bought demands to be mounted on a wall. Problem: The spot you've set aside for it has you seeing mostly glare. Don't give up and get a floor stand - get K2's X-Arm mount.

ROUND SOUND Don't think of the radial as an iPod speaker dock - it's more befitting to call it an iPod stage, encircling the player with curved 60-watt speakers to bust out your tunes, but keeping the iPod front and center to remind everyone who's really the star of the show.

COLOR ME RAD Six primary colors? That can't be right, yet Mitsubishi insists on calling its state-of-the-art TV color control the 6-Primary Color System, since it creates yellow, cyan, and magenta directly, rather than by mixing red, green, and blue. The upshot: a wider range of richer, more vibrant colors.