Vandersteen does build center channel speakers, subwoofers, and hang-on-the-wall speakers suitable for surrounds, and began as a company that specialized in high performance but surprisingly affordable speakers. They still do build less expensive models that compete strongly in that market segment,, but their flagship Model 5As, at around $15,000 and driven by Audio Research's $40,000/pair Reference 610T, 610W (!!) tube amp (sporting 36 viswible tubes in its two channels and warming up the room quite nicely) weren't designed for the beer-budget crowd. And surrounds, subs, and center channels weren't on the wine-list at the show, either.

With a rack of their familiar gear driving top-of-the-line Atlantic Technologies speakers plus four Outlaw subwoofers, those scoundrels were stealing another show with the best home theater demo at HE 2006. And even if there had been more than three serious home theater demos at the show, they probably still be laughing all the way away from the bank.

Although everything was blue at the Blu-ray introduction, including the martinis,no one was feeling blue when we were invited into a large theater and shown comparisons of standard definition video vs. high-definition on one of Sony's 4K SXRD digital cinema projectors.

INDIANAPOLIS June 2, 2006 – For $499, the new RCA HDV5000 HD DVD player is shipping to retailers. The player outputs HD-DVD in either 720p or 1080i output via HDMI and upconverts standard DVDs to either 720p or 1080i via its HDMI interface as well. Audio features include built-in multichannel decoders for Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD (2 channel), DTS and DTS-HD (5.1 channel) through either the HDMI interact or a S/PDIF output.

Another ask-the-editors session, this one about improving your home theater, was full of sage advice and even a few pretty good one-liners. We made it through almost 40 minutes of give and take until someone asked us which high definition disc format was better, Blu-ray or HD-DVD. Bottom line, we're not sure. The only thing about which we all agree, however, is that this format war stinks for everybody.

UAV's Fred Manteghian and Shane Buettner hard at work searching for video far and wide.