Ultimate AV is going completely to bits! But not to pieces.

"Sell the Mercedes! Hock the mink!" So wrote a still-active audio scribe (Peter Moncrieff) a quarter century ago while reviewing a pricey (for the time) tube preamp. Today, you can still pay more than the price of a Mercedes for an amplifier or speakers. And while few people today would be caught alive wearing a dead rat, the proverbial mink coat wouldn't go far toward the price of that top-drawer, custom home theater installation, either.

It never ends. Today's fast-changing AV scene constantly generates an ongoing flow of myths, legends, and other blather that either arises spontaneously or is deliberately manufactured to push the bewildered consumer toward a certain product or technology. I'll make a valiant attempt here to explode a few of these video urban legends, nevertheless secure in the knowledge that, like Don Quixote, I'll find an endless supply of new windmills just down the road.

I'm not exactly sure what a sugarplum is—probably a Christmas treat in Victorian England. But I do know that for those of us in the AV game, it comes early every year. September is time for the CEDIA Expo, to be held this year in Denver.