ROOM WITH A CLUE The downside of having an entertainment room is that it demotes your other rooms' status. But not if you set up a multiroom system, and Sonance's C4630SE can spread the joy to six other areas in your house.
GLOSS AND SHINE If you're half as serious about sound as you are pictures, the THX Ultra2-certified System 8200e should be on your shortlist. AT has updated its acclaimed 8200, adding sexy gloss-back sides to the new front LR towers at a lower price!
BLUE WONDER You couldn't swing a cellphone at CES in January without hitting a car stereo with Bluetooth capability. Being able to connect a mobile phone to a head unit wirelessly isn't just a convenience that commuters crave; in many states, hands-free phone operation behind the wheel is the law, not a choice.
Many people spend a lot of time selecting their gear with barely a thought to how they're going to hook everything up - until it's unpacked in the living room. In a modern A/V system, however, making the right connections can have a big effect on what you see and hear.
IBM is showing off a prototype optical transceiver chipset that's capable of reaching speeds at least eight times faster than other optical components available today. The new tiny gizmo moves information at 160 Gigabits - that's 160 billion bits of information for the techno-term-challenged - per second. Such speediness is accomplished not by using wires, but by using light.