HT Staff

Panasonic today announced that its flagship ZT60 Series of plasma HDTVs will be available exclusively through approximately 400 Magnolia locations inside Best Buy until July 31. The series offers two screen sizes: The 60-inch TC-P60ZT60 (shown, $3,500) and the 65-inch TC-P65ZT60 ($5,000).

Couch potatoes with an insatiable urge to record will love Panasonic's new DVD recorders. Announced July 14, the DMR-E100H and DMR-E200H both will feature 120GB and 160GB hard disk drives, respectively. With its 120GB hard disk drive the new DMR-E100H can record up to 160 hours of video in EP mode. The E-200H can record up to 212 hours of video on its 160GB hard drive. The recorders will also include slots for SD memory cards and PCMCIA slots for other types of memory. Both new machines will make their Japanese debut in August, with an autumn date set for the DMR-E100H's global debut.

Parasound doesn't make a huge distinction between "Home Theater" and "Custom Installation." In most cases, if you have one, you have the other.

Home theater fans almost universally agree that multichannel sound is great, but not all agree on how best to achieve it. Most find that incorporating five large box speakers---plus subwoofer and all the necessary cabling---into a typical home is difficult at best, and a point of contention that can strain even the most solid domestic relationships.