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The Epson Ensemble HD home theater system is a skillfully assembled package consisting of a control center/DVD player (shown here) with two HDMI inputs, a 720p or 1080p Epson LCD projector, a screen, and a speaker/amplification package from Atlantic Technology. The front speakers are integrated into a sleek cabinet that sits at the top of the retractable screen, the surrounds are built into the sides of the projector case (visible in the following entry), and the amplification for the entire system is built into the subwoofer cabinet. The entire package sells for $5000 with a 720p projector and $7000 with 1080p.The overall performance was very impressive and will blow away most consumers with its performance and slick, elegant design and setup. Equal to a more upscale system? No, but a lot closer to it than even the best home theater in a box can manage.

To those of us chasing the Nth degree of performance from our home theaters, it's always exciting when a truly audiophile company like Sim Audio attempts to define the state-of-the-art.

CD and radio in a box—iPod out back.

More than half a century of audio evolution has produced this modest box. Its grandparents are the high-end radios of the 1950s. Its parents are of the CD generation, a 1980s format increasingly viewed as archaic by the latest generation of listeners. And it accommodates the iPod, although it keeps the latest audio revolution literally at arm's length, in a separate docking device that plugs into the back of the system. The retrofit brings an already successful product family closer to being up to date.

At a time when the quality of feature animation was rapidly diminishing in Hollywood, Don Bluth did more than any filmmaker to keep the art form not just alive but healthy. In 1982, he directed his first full-length movie, The Secret of NIMH (now in a new Family Fun Edition DVD from MGM). That same year, Rick Dyer developed a revolutionary idea for an interactive laserdisc arcade game, which he pitched to Bluth and partner Gary Goldman. They would eventually cocreate the animation for what would become a video-game landmark, Dragon's Lair, the sumptuously realized quest of a hapless knight who—if we're quick with the stick—survives all manner of adversity to rescue a comely maiden from the clutches of a fire-breathing nasty. Before he struck out on his own, Bluth was a Disney veteran with decades of experience. He has given life to everything from the brood-friendly An American Tail, to Fox's ambitious Titan A.E., to the animated sequences in the Olivia Newton-John cult hit Xanadu. Yet a ravenous fan base continues to snap up Dragon's Lair on every new format, most recently the better-than-ever special-edition Blu-ray disc from Digital Leisure. I got to speak with Don Bluth, as well as Paul Gold from Digital Leisure.