Fred Manteghian

Not new, the VS3002 has been out a year now, but not many people know about it. It's a simple HDMI (V1.3a), but six-in, two-out make it a good option for someone with a decent AVR that's a little short on HDMI inputs. Placed between you devices and one of your current AVR's HDMI inputs will instantly give you more capacity and a new remote control to lose.

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The SR-6003 and SR-5003 AVRs from Marantz have the latest in in-processor decoding. In addition, the 6003 is slightly more powerful (100 wpc x 7 verses 90 wpc x 7), has more HDMI capability (3-in 2-out verses 3-in 1-out), but they both get Audyssey Multi-EQ and Sirius and XMradio-readiness. Best of all, the top model is only $1,199 and the other only $799. You go Marantz! (feature placards to follow).

The new Vista line by Boston Acoustics may be hard to photograph, but they are stunning and come with end caps in variety of finishes (a striped "ebony" wood was beautiful). In common with all the speakers in the line is a new Super Wide Bandwidth tweeter which is capable of being crossed down as low as 2 kHz while retaining good horizontal dispersion, according to reps in the BA's booth. Pictured are the $3,398 a pair VS 336 floor standers (3-way, with three 6-1/2" drivers) and the $1,699 VPS 210 subwoofer (500 class D watts into a 10" driver / 10" passive). There's a 3 way center and an LCR as well that could be used as a center as well some smaller bookshelves in the line. Special red and Arctic white finishes are available for a 20% premium as well. Unfortunately, the demo material used was worthless for giving any impression on how they might sound.