OTHER TECH

Meridian F80 Home Entertainment System $2,995 www.thef80.com It's kind of silly to call the Meridian F80 a table radio. Yes, it can sit on a table, and it does have an AM/FM tuner and an alarm function. But beyond that, any resemblance it bears to the El Plastico warblers (with those annoying buzzers) that you can pick up for 20 bucks at Wal-Mart is purely coincidental.

For almost $3,000, you expect something pretty special - and the F80 goes well beyond pretty special to be something of an engineering marvel. It's not so much a radio as an elegantly executed minisystem, capable of both CD and DVD playback (thanks to a slot-loading disc drive and audio, composite-video, and S-video outputs). And its left and right front drivers and rear-firing bass driver, aided by an 80-watt amp and great gobs of DSP, can easily fill just about any size room with truly gorgeous sound. (At CEDIA Expo 2007, Meridian head Bob Stuart used an F80 to flood the company's sprawling show-floor booth with music.)

The F80 is something of a chameleon. The cleverly designed OLED readout changes to reflect whether you're using the radio, the DVD drive, or whatever, and it reassigns the functions of the thin control bars aligned below it. Meanwhile, a large, nubby knob on the lower right corner of the chassis's Ferrari-sanctioned arch handles the volume. (There's also a credit-card-size remote.) And the DSP compensates for the listening environment, ensuring that sound quality is the same whether the F80 is placed on a bedside table in a small bedroom or on the coffee table in a sprawling great room.

This thing's literally no lightweight: At slightly over 14 pounds, it's a hefty little sucker. Part of that's due to its rigid construction (for eliminating cabinet resonances), and part of it's due to its extensive electrical innards.

You wouldn't want to use this for your main system, since there's no easy way to do surround sound - and all the electronic wizardry in the world can't get drivers that are placed this close together to create adequate separation for a home theater system. But the F80 would make an excellent DVD player/sound system for a bedroom, office, vacation home, or dorm room (though you're just asking for trouble if you keep a component this expensive in a dorm room).

By the way, exotic-car lover John Sciacca told me to let everyone know that the Ferrari color shown here is called Giallo Modena. The F80 also comes in Rosso Corsa (red), Bianco Avus (white), Nero (black), and Argento Nurburgring (silver). - Michael Gaughn

Razer Mako THX Desktop 2.1-Channel Speaker System $300 razerzone.com Razer USA made itself the envy of computer gamers everywhere with innovations like the Diamondback optical mouse and the Tarantula keyboard. So when the company teamed up with THX to create reference speakers for desktop audio, the results were . . . paperweight-shattering.

The Mako system's special sauce is its THX speakers, which are designed to fire downward, bouncing the audio off the desktop (or credenza, dresser, wall, or any other flat surface) to create a clear, airy sound - and, thanks to the subwoofer, a pounding one. The system's 50 watts per channel for the satellites (supplied by an amplifier built into the sub) sound like much more. Another fun fact: This compact 2.1-channel setup boasts a frequency range of 30 Hz to 20 kHz.

The Razer system couldn't be easier to hook up. Run a line out from your PC (or other source) to the sub's minijack connection. Then run a single cable (capped with click-in phone-jack-type connectors) from the subwoofer to each of the satellites.

I tested these lopped-off orbs with the Deimos Rising game that came with my iMac (sorry - I'm not a hardcore gamer). And let me tell you, dropping those videogame bombs lets loose enough ground-cracking subwoofer lows to warrant a visit from Homeland Security.

My real thrill, though, was pumping my high-bit-rate iTunes files. "In Da Club" sounded like I was actually . . . you know. Certain songs coughed up sonic details I've never heard before. (Is that a Velociraptor squawking in the background of Blondie's "Heart of Glass"?) And for the first time ever, my MP3 of Paris Hilton's deeply bassy "Stars Are Blind" wasn't distorted. (Hey, stop laughing: Paris is very hot in gaming circles. Or so I hear.) - Rob Medich

Universal Remote Control MX-810 Remote $399 universalremote.com Typical A/V systems have a minimum of four remotes - which is three too many! One sweet solution is the MX-810 from Universal Remote Control (URC). It restyles some of URC's most popular models but with some neat upgrades that make this sub-$400 remote the wand for the cool crowd.

From the moment you pick it up, the 810's bright, 2-inch color display comes to life, showing either activities (watch a movie, listen to music, play a game, and so on) or a list of devices. But instead of boring text, each activity has its own easily identifiable graphic.

You can program the 810 using any Windows PC with a USB port - and that often-painful process is greatly simplified by an entirely new wizard that guides you through each step. Customized touches like tweaking the remote's look and layout and setting up favorite channels with station icons are quick and easy. And with memory to handle 24 activities and 24 devices with 384 customizable pages, this remote has plenty of power under the hood.

Throw in a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, compatibility with URC's narrow-band RF receivers (for controlling gear that's hidden away in cabinetry or another room), and a "Help" button to fix things if they get off track, and you've got a remote with brains that match its beauty. - John Sciacca

Infinity TSS 3-in-1 Speaker System $1,326 infinitysystems.com The advent of flat-panel TVs changed pretty much everything about home theater. Rooms that were once filled with Volkswagen-size TVs, hulking speakers, and electronics that looked like a mad scientist's lab gear were transformed back into actual living spaces, where the only thing A/V on display was that big-screen plasma or LCD TV.

But hiding speakers isn't always a good idea, because sound quality can suffer. And not everybody wants to hack up their walls just to have a bunch of flush-mounted metal grilles looking back at them.

That's where the various sound bars come in. They mate well with flat panels, while leaving your walls unbreached. And they have many of the virtues of freestanding speakers without having to be placed out in the room.

Infinity's TSS 3-in-1 system ($679) places the front left, center, and right channels in a single thin, long cabinet. No, it can't compete with big-driver towers. But add a couple of petite surround speakers (like the $218-a-pair TSS-SAT750s) and a beefy sub (like the $429 TSS-SUB750), and it can hold its own in a modest-size space - say, 11 x 14 feet.

At 401/8 x 41/8 x 43/8 inches, the 3-in-1 looks unassumingly elegant mounted under a 42-inch flat-panel. But its drivers - a 3/4-inch tweeter and two 31/2 midranges for each channel - put out decent sound, given its size. With a 3/4-inch tweeter and a 31/2-inch midrange, each SAT750 has a driver complement similar to the 3-in-1's. Add the sub's 10-inch side-firing driver, and you've got a discrete little system capable of substantial (but uncolored) sound.

The TSS 3-in-1 system opened up the subtle, intricate 5.1-channel mix of Blue Man Group's "Sing Along" (from The Complex Rock Tour Live DVD), letting the various percussion instruments have their own space, while still feeling part of the overall mix. The sound was consistently pleasing without ever becoming unnaturally warm or gratingly shrill.

If there's somebody on your list with a smaller-than-average home theater or family room, or a master bedroom or vacation home with a flat-panel TV but no surround sound, here's a system that will fill their room with great sound, and the recipient with good cheer. - Michael Gaughn