LATEST ADDITIONS

Back in the early 1990s, I helped a friend carry a new rear-projection television up three flights of stairs to a small one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Although its screen was only 50 inches, that bulky box was about the size and weight of a classic Volkswagen Bug. My back was so tweaked that I walked around hunched over, stinking of Ben-Gay, for a week.

Many people hide their A/V gear behind cabinet doors or put the system off in a closet somewhere. But how do you control everything when you can't point the remote at any of it? The oh-so-simple solution is to install an infrared (IR) repeating system, which carries signals from your remote to wherever your gear may live.

You know the gag. You see someone walking down the street and about to step on a banana peel. Do you shout "STOP," or remain silent and then applaud as he does an awesome pirouette.

Epson has announced its new flagship home theater front projector, the PowerLite Pro Cinema 1080p. As the model name suggests this three-chip LCD is a full-on 1080p front projector, but the real news is that when the projector goes on sale in January 2007 the street price is $4,999. Plummeting street prices on three-chip 1080p projectors is a trend I think we can all get with!