The new Thiel 3.7 prototypes, while otherwise superb, sounded lean in the bass. Blame it on the room or the newness of the design. By the time they come out (I heard in the fall), I'm sure the bass issue will be corrected. From the midrange up, they were solid and coherent – a Thiel signature. Sure, the unusual drivers look like spinners you'd see driving around LA, but they sure sounded great. Oh yeah, the reason for the update to Shane's previous blog – rumored price is just under $10,000.

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.

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.

Jacob George has built the Rethm horn loaded speaker for the purist. A single driver system with no crossovers whatsoever. The speaker itself has a sort of wheezer device that almost looks like the tail of a badminton, but the fact that he was getting full range sound out of a single speaker was impressive enough. The speaker is available in two models, with ($9,500/pr) or without ($7,500) the extension (shown) that drops the speaker's low end from about 50 Hz to 38 Hz. It does make you rethink where you're going to put the TV though. With extension careening off the back end, this isn't designed for those living the i-Life.