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As we stepped through the door at Lenbrook's joint PSB and NAD exhibit, PSB's Paul Barton said: "Have you heard the NAD digital amp?" The M2, winner of a CES Innovations 2010 award, was playing with PSB's floorstanding flagship Synchrony. It had a tight and crisp though not terribly warm sound compared to what we have heard the same speaker do with analog amps. (Incidentally, the Synchrony is one of our all-time favorite towers.) Power output 250 watts times two into either four or eight ohms. Price $5999. NAD also showed its new M56 Blu-ray player, which is fully up to date with BD-Live capability, and at $1999, it ought to be.

Another Vizio concept demo was a 56-inch "Quad HD" LCD with a pixel resolution of 3840x2160. What a picture! Super-sharp and detailed, a noticeable improvement over 1080p even at a reasonable viewing distance. Initial applications include medical imaging and other high-res rendering, but it could find its way into the consumer marketplace if and when 4K content becomes available.

Thin was definitely in at Vizio, which showed several super-slim LCD TVs with LED edge-lighting as a concept demo. The 42-inch Blade seen here in profile is only 6.8mm (1/4-inch) thick, making it the thinnest flat panel I've seen at the show so far, with the electronics in an outboard box. The 26-inch version is 1/2-inch thick with the electronics in the base.

I've seen the XStreamHD satellite service demonstrated for the last couple of years at CES, but so far, it hasn't actually been available to consumers. Well, that's finally about to change—the service is due to launch on April 30. It allows users to download movies, music videos, and games from a satellite to a hard-disk-based server, from which they can be streamed to several receivers in the home—in fact, up to four HD streams can be served simultaneously. Users have the option of renting or buying the content, and they can even order physical discs if they wish. Movies are downloaded in 1080p/24 format with up to 7.1 DTS-HD MA audio (Dolby TrueHD is not supported as of now), and the server can download up to two titles at once, each with a maximum bandwidth of 100Mbps per stream.