Onkyo's HT-S990THX is a whole Home Theater in a Box. Actually, it's a Home Theater in a Really Big Box. For $1,099 you get a 7.1 110 watt per channel receiver, three LCR two-way speakers (with two woofers and a single tweeter) for the front channel, and four smaller two-way speakers for the surrounds and a 10" powered sub as well. There's no HDMI inputs, but there is a THX logo on the front panel that speaks volumes about the quality you should expect. Absolutely amazing at this price. I heard a rumor that Home Theater magazine has one in for review (hint: check your newsstands or better yet, subscribe!)

I just watched a short high definition demo on SIM HT 3000. That's their new 1920 x 1080 7 segment color whell DLP projector. With dual HDMI inputs and a 1.5-2.0 lens (a 2.0-3.0 lens is coming soon as well). The picture on a large screen was excellent and the unit's bluer than gunmetal finish was attractive as well. Price will be around $16,000.

KEF has a solution for people who don't want a lot of speakers in their room, their new FiveTwo Series. The two models in the series, the floor standing model 11 and stand mounted model 7, split the center channel signal between a driver in each of the speakers (that 3rd one from the top in the picture.) The sides of both models feature flat side mounted driver arrays that shoot the sound out to the sides and, presumably, around the room enough to fill in for what isn't in the back. A special connector is provided with the appropriate leads for your receiver or amp so a consumer doesn't have to worry about dragging three speaker cables to each speaker to make this all work.

Oh, I could tell you about the Yamaha's RX-V2700 7.1 channel receiver's Ethernet connection lets you access Internet radio stations and music stored on computer drives, or how the RX-V2700 has 140 watts for each of its seven channels, or about how they extended the room optimization (equalization) module to go down to 31 Hz instead of 63Hz. Or I could mention that the receiver will supersize your 480i video to 480p, or even 720p or 1080i using the Anchor Bay Technology's ABT1010 video chip. Or I could say that if you use Yamaha's $100 iPod docking station, you can control the iPod with the receiver's remote. Or I could say that the can get all this for only $1,699.