New Products

This might be my favorite tent in the annual Home Theater circus. The Home Theater Top Picks of the Year are the very best components we’ve reviewed over the past year in all the major categories. We also call out an overall Product of the Year and a Budget Pick of the Year. This year we see a terrific mix of emerging new technologies—3D and next-gen media servers are both represented—and stalwart audio brands that deliver high-end sound year in and year out amid the constant churn of technology.

$400 Pro- $795, 1200C- $2,195

RGPC's staple device is the four outlet 400 Pro, and it stands out in a very densely crowded category as a no BS product that actually works. Inside each RGPC is a large inductor core, or choke, and a fast-blo fuse. Unlike so many of the surge protectors or line conditioners out there the RGPC is wired in parallel with the incoming AC, which means there's no current limiting, and components don't have to be plugged directly into the RGPC units to receive the full effect. The RGPC simply has to be plugged into an outlet on the same circuit as your gear. Several RGPC units can be "star clustered" in groups for improved performance, and the 1200 Custom is in fact two 400 Pro devices in a single box with 12 outlets. Inductive power filtering is becoming very popular in many high-end products, and the results that can be reaped from the RGPC devices with both audio and video systems can be noticeable, if not staggering (especially with power hungry components like CRTs and plasmas screens). RGPC devices are the only PLC devices in SB's reference system.

Ground Control, this is Off-Road Gear One, a.k.a. ORG-1, as I'm still orbiting the earth in the experimental mobile-entertainment vessel I transmitted from last month. Do you copy?

Yes, I copy, ORG-1. This is Steve at Ground Control. I can hear you loud and clear - and without distortion, I might add.

JVC

Prep for the future with JVC's RX-9010VBK digital surround receiver. Rated to deliver 120 watts to each of five channels, it has such forward-looking features as a front-panel USB port and an extended frequency response, rated from 7 Hz to 50 kHz ±3 dB, to handle the wider bandwidth of DVD-Audio.

SONY

Pushing the upper size limits of a cathode-ray tube (CRT), Sony's 40-inch KV-40XBR700 Wega is the largest direct-view CRT set on the market. It's also an HDTV monitor and has two wideband component-video inputs, 2:3 (also called 3:2) pulldown capability to improve the look of film-based material, and aspect ratio control.

Sony

Rated to deliver 110 watts of power to each of six channels, Sony's STR-DA5ES digital surround receiver is ready for 6.1-channel DVD soundtracks. If you're torn between DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD, the receiver's two sets of multichannel analog audio inputs let you hook up both at once, and one set can even handle 6.1-channel sources.