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Price: $2,900 At A Glance: Gloss finish and rounded edges enrich rectangular appearance • Custom-designed woofers and tweeter • A polite top end with fully fleshed-out midrange

Between VS and CS

In this brutal economy, it takes more than a good resume to keep you afloat. Boston Acoustics has a legendary audiophile pedigree that dates from its birth in 1979 as an independent brand. In this environment, it probably matters more that Boston is part of the D&M Holdings family, along with Snell Acoustics, McIntosh, Denon, Marantz, and Escient. This positioning has already borne fruit with pairings of Denon A/V receivers and Boston speaker packages, including the distinctive bell-shaped VS Series speakers, which I showered with well-deserved superlatives when I reviewed them last year. You really can’t go wrong with a set of VS speakers and one of Denon’s upper-end A/V receivers.

The Denon S-5BD is a combination Blu-ray player and a/v receiver. The player is BD-Live capable and the receiver is no slouch either. It includes Audyssey MultEQ auto setup and room correction plus Audyssey's Dynamic Volume and Dynamic EQ for the ultimate scalable flexibility in low-volume listening -- a boon to action movie lovers who burn the midnight oil. The height-enhanced Dolby Pro Logic IIz surround listening mode is also included. Front panel connectivity includes HDMI, SD card, and direct iPod-capable USB (unless you'd prefer to add Denon's dock). The S-5BD won a CES Innovations 2010 Design and Engineering award and will ship in March for $1799.

Hundreds of new speakers saw their debut at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. No one could possibly hear them all in the four days of the show, especially when you consider that they were scattered among numerous venues. But I heard a lot...

Samsung's flagship C6000 ultra-thin LED LCD TV provides a super-cool, full-color touchscreen remote. In addition to controlling the TV, it can also display a live video signal, though I can't see why you'd want to watch the remote when you have a big, beautiful TV in the same room.