The LG LH50 LCD series and the PS80 plasma series will soon provide streaming of the popular movies-on-demand service, Vudu. These new Internet-connected TVs employ "NetCast Entertainment Access", allowing users to browse, search, and choose a variety of HD and HDX films right from their TVs without an additional Vudu set-top box.

Designer-oriented homeowners have steadily been moving away from large behemoth loudspeakers, opting for hidden solutions. However, for those enthusiasts that still like to show off their electronics, even loudspeakers are getting more stylish. With loudspeakers like MartinLogan's Feature, you can put back the WOW in your AV presentation. The Feature is a fully powered, high-resolution, electrostatic loudspeaker designed for use either on or off-wall for center, front, or surround channel applications. Pictured here it is being used as a center speaker with MartinLogan's breathtaking Purity floor standing electrostatic speakers that make their own statement.

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Of all the “this is the coolest damn thing I’ve ever seen” things a home theater/wholehome automation system can do, the one that is consistently the most mesmerizing, most envied, coolest “coolest damn thing” is the control of motorized window treatments. (Although it sounds like something a doctor would prescribe for sick building syndrome, window treatments is the term people in the know use for what you and I would call curtains, blinds, and shades.) If you’ve never experienced motorized shades (or drapes or blinds)—and I mean experienced in the sense that you’ve seen them in action in someone’s home and not in a too-clean-to-be-believable picture-perfect designer’s showroom or a slickly edited online video—it’s difficult to grasp the enchanted feeling and quasi-mystical pleasure that even the least gadget-savvy person can get from being in a room in which some hidden electronic sorcery conjures the shades to obediently open and close (or stop anywhere in between) on command or makes the curtains part like the Red Sea as if Moses were holding a remote control in his hand instead of a staff. Even the reticent Wizard of Oz, himself, would rush out from his hiding place behind the curtain to watch it open and close by remote control if it were motorized.

In celebration of 60 years developing some of the highest quality sound reproduction products in the world, McIntosh releases the MXA60 Executive System, the company's first standalone integrated audio system.

My home began as a tiny two-room house on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere back in the late 1800s. A century later, I’m sitting in a cubbyhole office in the original upstairs section. Old and new sections butt up against one another. Some of the home’s old elements have been remade to look new, while its new parts have a patina of old. Straight lines and level floors are few and far between. With two totally separate (in both location and age) upstairs areas, it almost qualifies as a human Habitrail. As they say in the real estate business, it has character.

NAD is bringing a new preamp-tuner-processor and two new multichannel power amps to CEDIA.