Darryl Wilkinson

Personalize this.

I'm a bit reluctant to say this, but my experience with Boston Acoustics goes back a long way – to the days when the Boston Acoustics A40 and A70 speakers were the giants of the bookshelf speaker world. In fact, most of the Boston A-series speakers back then were highly regarded when it came to sound quality. Build quality was so-so but decent for late-1980s vinyl-wrap box cabinets. Just about any store that carried them sold tons of Boston Acoustics' bookshelf and floorstanding speakers, and they were proud to do it, too.

There are two (actually three depending on how you look at it, but who's counting?) major benefits to owning a front-projection HDTV. The size of the image, ranging from 60 to 120 inches in most home theater systems, makes movie watching at home almost as enjoyable as - and, in some cases, better than - what you'd see at the local multiplex. When it comes to images under 80 inches, of course, you can always rely on a rear-projection HDTV for the center of your home theater. But that's where a front-projection television has its second advantage. Even with the slimmest of the current rear-projection television designs, there's still the issue of the amount of physical space in the room that's taken up. While the amount of actual space is fairly small, the emotional space is still pretty high. ("You're not putting that in my living room!") With a paper-thin screen hanging on the wall or descending from the ceiling plus a small projection unit located across the room, the physical and emotional space used is negligible. What about plasma or LCD flat-panel HDTVs? When it comes to 60-inch or larger televisions, front-projection HDTVs can be purchased and installed for much less than an equivalently sized flat-panel - and, in many cases, you'll enjoy a better quality image.

They say you can't please all of the people all of the time, but Sony's newest DVD burner aims to do just that. Sony's new DVDirect (which Sony asks that you pronounce as "DVD Direct" even though they left out a "D" and a space) is "the first in the world capable of stand-alone, real-time DVD recording, as well as computer-attached burning." As such, Sony hopes it will appeal to those camcorder owners with poor or negligible computer skills who still want to be able to archive precious (and typically quite boring) family memories on DVD while at the same time fulfilling the needs of more computer-savvy members of the household.

RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service keeps finding new partners to jam with. Earlier this month, Sonos announced a software update to their multi-room digital music system that allows users to access Rhapsody's immense library of songs without requiring a computer. Now the behemoth big box retailer Best Buy is giving the free world access to the Best Buy Digital Music Store - a an on-line purchasing playhouse powered by the Rhapsody 4.0 service.