Brent Butterworth

On June 11, 2009, I lost a cherished friend: the Sony Watchman TV I'd owned for 20 years. When analog TV broadcasts went dead that day, my Watchman, along with every other portable analog mini-TV, suddenly became useless. A few portable digital TVs have since appeared to fill the gap, but because the ATSC digital-TV standard wasn't designed for mobile use, none of them can deliver the reliable roving reception of my 1980s-vintage Watchman.

All audio experts agree that two subwoofers are better than one. With the fervor of a Star Wars nut explaining the Force, they'll tell you how using two subs makes bass response smoother for multiple listeners. But don't worry; it's easy to get the experts to clam up -- just ask them for an easy way to fine-tune the performance of two subs.

Just when you think they're all done adding more channels to sound systems, they add a couple more. The June 18 premiere of Toy Story 3 also marked the premiere of Dolby Surround 7.1, a technology that allows a commercial cinema to add two additional channels of sound to the 5.1 channels they already have. The existing left, center, right, left surround, right surround, and low-frequency effects channels have been augmented with left back surround and right back surround channels.

If you're more than 30 years old, you may remember when almost all speakers looked like the BIC RtR 1530 featured in a recent Parts Express e-mailer: big woofers and big enclosures, with little or no effort expended to make everything presentable. Nowadays, in the interest of gaining our domestic partners' permission to buy the damned things in the first place, we demand that our speakers be compact and gorgeous.