The Buzz

The HT-X715, Samsung’s solution for small room all-in-one surround home theater systems.

From Samsung, a new dual HD Player, the BD UP5500, takes the guess about the future out and gives the best of both worlds.

Aside from the ability to watch Thelma on Good Times in lifesize, there are other practical applications of 108″ of TV screen: The Aquos Wall. With the Wall technology, Sharp comes up with about the closest thing to actual interactive television, by turning the screen into a widget-based interface, similar to the dashboard on a Mac. In this formation, the TV monitor function shrinks to 52″ while web-connected screen widgets pull down news, weather, calendars, photos, maps and other useful content from the web.

*A clear Contender for My Coolest Things at CES

A lovely bunch of flowers. Well, yes, but this a picture of the screen of a new Sharp high contrast HD LCD TV prototype with the most incredible color of anything in the show. A crowd of admirers stand in front of it every few minutes and just murmur to themselves “Omigod, Omigod.” Sharp is known for its deep blacks, but this is in abyss deep - a jaw-dropping 100,000:1 contrast ratio. For comparison, that flat screen in your basement is - if you’re real lucky - no more than 30,000 to 1, more likely  5000:1.

LG, the electronics company that’s been popping out of nowhere to get serious attention in the affordable high end market has teamed up with audio design guru Mark Levinson on a series of all-in-one home theater systems that your normal HTIB (home theater in a box) can’t hold a candle to. The focus here is not only on sound but (as is this year’s trend), a real look toward integrating home theater design into the current state of home decor - i.e. - chick friendly so guys can spend the milk money without sleeping on the couch.

Lexicon’s MV-5 processor/preamp comes with 2 HDMI inputs and can run anything from your PC media player to your DVD player to your iPod dock.

Are your noticing a pattern here? The best stuff is made by companies you’ve never heard of. No President’s Day Sale at Best Buy to score this stuff. This amazing audio stack was introduced by Soulution Audio.

Together, only about $64,000. And worth every bit of it (um, I guess. But I’ll never know).

There’s really no sense paying umpteen thousands of dollars on a home entertainment system if your wife thinks it’s ugly and won’t let you set it up. Hence, a whole slew of audio companies working diligently to vastly improve both the look and sound quality of on-wall speakers that fit into contemporary interior design. Enter WaterFall, a French company, with its Glass Wall Speaker System with backlighting that gives the impression of sconces but kicks out ridiculously great and balanced sound for the relatively reasonable estimated cost of $6000 for the five speaker surround system - none of the stuff to connect to the speakers included, of course. Unavailable at dealerships at press time. Give it 90 days.

Moving with the trend to put all your media in a single system is Kaleidescape, with a multizone media server that connects to the Kaleidescape movie player and music player devices. In a nutshell, a Kaleidescape installer will program all of your media into the system, which throws all of it into a super smart visual interface that you can control from a panel anywhere in the house - music, movies, video, PC content and web. Serious points on design. Estimated cost for the whole magilla - $15,000.