LATEST ADDITIONS

There's a trend afoot in A/V-land to make even Flagship receivers simpler (at least on the outside), easier to use, and physically more compact and less intimidating. Now Yamaha has boarded this bus, not just with a single model but with an entire new family of AVRs it's calling Aventage (rhymes with fromage). Cheesy names aside, the news here is that, for once, "new and improved" really is: new form factor, new user interface, new network-ability, new remote control, and lots of new (or at least evolved) audio and video technology.

If I review more speakers like the Gallo Acoustics Nucleus Reference Strada, my Office Depot bill will skyrocket. Within the first 2 minutes of listening to this speaker, I filled a page and a half of my lab notebook with verbiage — and the torrential scribbling continued for days, consuming paper faster than a schnauzer snarfs up Snausages.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably noticed that it's a great big 3D world out there, and it's getting bigger every day. The latest arrival is Toshiba's 55WX800U, a 55-inch 3D LCD TV with edge-lit LED backlighting. At $3,300 (list), the 55WX800U doesn?t come cheap, but it does have the usual array of features we've come to expect from a top-of-the-line set.