New Products

DCM Available in black ash or cherry finish, DCM's latest home theater speaker system includes a pair of DCM16 tower speakers, two DCM16S bookshelf surround speakers, a DCM16C center speaker, and a DCM TB1212 powered subwoofer. The DCM16 is 30 1/4 inches tall and has a 6 1/2-inch fiberglass woofer and a 1-inch tweeter. Its frequency response is rated as 40 Hz to 20 kHz ±3 dB. The DCM16S surround has the same drivers and measures 8 x 13 x 7 1/2 inches, while the DCM16C center has two of the woofers and is 195/8 inches wide. Filling in the deep bass is the 150-watt TB1212 sub. With a 12-inch driver and 12-inch passive radiator, its response is rated down to 27 Hz. The sub has both speaker- and line-level inputs and is available in black ash only. Price: $1,120. www.dcmspeakers.com, 877-326-5683 ReQuest Multimedia Fill up the AudioReQuest Nitro digital audio server with MP3 files, and you'll have plenty of music on tap. The ARQ Nitro comes with either a 40- or 60-gigabyte (GB) hard disk, and it can store music in either CD audio or MP3 format. You can easily rip songs to the hard drive from the built-in CD player, and song, artist, and album names are automatically picked up from the internal database or Gracenote's Web site (as long as you connect it to the Internet via its Ethernet port). If you hook up the server to a TV, you can view menus and album art onscreen through the VGA, composite-, or S-video outputs. It also has optical and coaxial digital audio inputs. Prices: 60 GB, $3,000; 40 GB, $2,500. www.request.com, 800-236-0802 Proton There's no stopping TV from going digital, and you can get ahead of the game with Proton's HT-34A ProFlat 32-inch direct-view HDTV monitor. The 4:3 aspect ratio set can accept high-def signals though its four wideband component-video inputs or RGB+H/V input, displaying the images at their native resolution. A built-in line doubler with 2:3 pulldown upconverts standard interlaced signals to 480p (progressive) format. There are three color-temperature presets, and a flexible picture-in-picture function allows for watching a digital and an analog program at the same time. The set also has four composite/S-video inputs. Price: $3,000. www.proton-usa.com, 562-404-2222 DeCorp It's the next best thing to wireless speakers-DeCorp's flat speaker wire will disappear in a custom installation without the need to drill holes or string cables behind walls. The wire is less than 1/64 inch thick, with twin strands sealed in a polyester-film insulator. First you stick the wire to a bare wall with the adhesive ($10), the insulation preventing overlapping wire from getting jumbled. After painting or wallpapering, only you will know it's there. The wire emerges at wall plates ($15 each), and various proprietary connectors are available. It comes in 12-, 14-, 16-, and 18-gauge types, either 1 7/8 or 2 1/4 inches wide. Prices: $1 to $5 per foot. www.decorp.com, 615-264-1414 Bel Canto You can always see what you're doing with Bel Canto's PRePro preamp/processor-the front-panel color LCD screen shows any video input signal and makes onscreen menu changes convenient. The preamp decodes Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES soundtracks, and it has Dolby Pro Logic II for multichannel processing of stereo signals. Its eight-channel analog audio input features bass management, and a 7.1 Bypass mode keeps extraneous processing out of the signal path when you play Super Audio CD or DVD-Audio discs. The five main channels have 24-bit/196-kHz digital-to-analog converters, and there are both RCA and balanced XLR multichannel audio outputs. The two component-video inputs can switch HDTV signals, and the back panel also has five composite- and seven S-video inputs, two record loops, four optical and six coaxial digital audio inputs, and a FireWire port. Price: $7,900. www.belcantodesign.com, 612-317-4550 Onkyo Do you like stereo or multichannel? Movies or music? MP3 or high-res audio? Relax-just press play, and Onkyo's DV-SP800 will do the rest. DVD-Audio discs, Super Audio CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, and discs with MP3 files are all as welcome to the THX Ultra-certified player as regular DVDs and CDs. The progressive-scan component-video output includes 2:3 pulldown to compensate for frame-rate differences between video and film, and the player performs bass management for SACD playback (but not DVD-Audio). The back panel has two sets of stereo analog outputs, a multichannel analog output, two composite- and two S-video outputs, and one coaxial and two optical digital audio outputs. Price: $1,000. www.onkyousa.com, 800-229-1687 Linksys Your wireless home network doesn't have to stop at your computer stuff-the Linksys WET11 Ethernet bridge plugs into an A/V component's Ethernet port so it can ride the airwaves, too. Connect it to a digital music server to get it talking to your computer network. Or you can hook it up to your hard-disk video recorder to wirelessly access Web-based TV guides. The bridge adheres to the Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b) standard for wireless devices, with a transfer rate up to 11 megabits per second (Mbps) and a 300-foot range with the built-in antenna. Software to configure the bridge via your PC is supplied. Price: $129. www.linksys.com, 800-546-5797