LATEST ADDITIONS

There are countless major music studios that have not transitioned successfully to the Digi-Tools age of computers. JVC Victor is not one of them. Getting into their elevator for a music tour, a philosophy that will become clearer as the tour continues is printed on the inside of the elevator so that all visitors and employees can read and remember it in moments when nothing else might be going on.

Sony's PlayStation3 is looking like a better deal all the time. The latest revelation is that the Blu-ray Disc based game console will include the ability to decode up to 7.1-channels of Dolby TrueHD. TrueHD is a so-called "lossless" audio codec that attains compression rates as high as 4:1, but reconstructs the original signal bit-for-bit on playback. Although there have been delays announced for the European availability of PS3, the premium version of the console is due to hit US stores on November 17th at a price of $599.

SINGULAR SOUND Ever thought you'd see the day when you could harness the sound of a home theater from a single box? That day is today if you have the ZVOX 325, which crams an entire speaker system - amps, drivers, and sound processing - into one 17-inch-wide component.

BAR NONE You can't stand black bars on your screen, but you still want to watch movies as the directors intended. DVDO's VP20 video processor might offer you a decent compromise, as its Precision Video Scaling II can scale the horizontal and vertical aspects of the picture independently.