LATEST ADDITIONS

We love market surveys.  No, really, we like knowing where our households fit into the average, and whether we're up on the latest trends. Who doesn't want to appear "normal," right? A new study by market research company The NPD...

With the TGM-100 Theater Grand Media Server, Sunfire has added a signal source to its excellent speaker and amp products, so now you can have a complete Sunfire system. The server sucks up DVDs and CDs and stores the content on the TGM-HD6 Theater Grand Hard Drive. Note that the latter, on the bottom, has eight slots. Available drives hold one, three, or six terabytes. Sunfire will explore the Blu-ray angle "when it makes sense."

The Wadia 170 iTransport is the first iPod docking device to coax a digital signal out of the iPod (incidentally, my 82-year-old mom loves hers). Till now the iPod could output only a line-level analog signal to docks. How Wadia managed this is a story yet to be told. The company insists that there is no need to pay a hacker to crack the case –- the 170 is Apple-approved. Price: $379.

The Harman Kardon AVR 7550HD ($2799) is the one of first surround receivers to feature Dolby Volume, one of the most sophisticated signal manipulation circuits to come along in years. It can take the edge off offensively toppy TV ads and intelligently reduce the dynamics of movie soundtracks, for late-night viewing, without losing intelligibility. Other attractions include 110 watts times seven, internet radio, and of course the full panoply of next-gen surround codecs via HDMI 1.3a.