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.

HDMI cables are subject to misbehaving. The longer the run, the bigger the chance that the desired "I" signal pattern is turned into something that looks more like the oscilloscope sine wave that opens classic episodes of "Outer Limits." But you can control the vertical and horizontal, so to speak, with some HDMI extenders. There are several kinds available, from inexpensive inline devices like the UltraLink that worked for Tom (but not for me) and there are more heavily engineered solutions like the Etheral Restorer.