LATEST ADDITIONS

The new Vista line by Boston Acoustics may be hard to photograph, but they are stunning and come with end caps in variety of finishes (a striped "ebony" wood was beautiful). In common with all the speakers in the line is a new Super Wide Bandwidth tweeter which is capable of being crossed down as low as 2 kHz while retaining good horizontal dispersion, according to reps in the BA's booth. Pictured are the $3,398 a pair VS 336 floor standers (3-way, with three 6-1/2" drivers) and the $1,699 VPS 210 subwoofer (500 class D watts into a 10" driver / 10" passive). There's a 3 way center and an LCR as well that could be used as a center as well some smaller bookshelves in the line. Special red and Arctic white finishes are available for a 20% premium as well. Unfortunately, the demo material used was worthless for giving any impression on how they might sound.

Denon's DVP-602CI is playing to a small marketplace, but they're playing. This 6-in, 2-out HDMI unit may look like a simple switcher, but it can scale as well, up to 1080p. Why I'm showing you the business end of this unit instead of the face plate, is so you can see the two component (one RCA style, one BNC) inputs and the s-video and composite inputs that make this Denon capable of feeding everything to your video display via a single cable. Like I said, it's a niche player, but if you're in the market and have $2,499 to spare, look no further.