LATEST ADDITIONS

Since veteran Acoustic Research loudspeaker designer Ken Kantor and Chris Byrne founded the company back in 1986, NHT has been tossed around like a corporate football: first to Jensen International in the early 1990's, then to Recoton, and to Rockford Corporation in 2002 following Recoton's failure. Finally, in 2005, Rockford handed it off to Colorado-based Vinci Group.

• $500
• XM ready with included XM Connect & Play antenna
• Component setup, so upgrading is easy
• Adjust the setup with Digital Cinema Auto Calibration and the included microphone

Sony's HT-7000DH is a component-style 5.1-channel home-theater-in-a-box. It includes a receiver (STR-K7000), a five-disc carousel DVD player (DVP-NC85H), four satellites, a center-channel speaker, and a subwoofer. The speakers have a black faux-wood finish. Aesthetically, there's nothing about them that stands out, so they should blend in easily among bookcases and shelving units. The DVD player upconverts over the HDMI connection to 720p or 1080i. It can read all DVD video formats, as well as VCD and JPEG. Being a Sony, it can also play SACDs. As for other audio formats, it is limited to CD, CD-R, CD-RW, and MP3 playback.

JVC has developed a new optical engine what squeezes 58" and 65" 1080p HD-ILA RPTVs into cabinets with depths of just 10.7" and 11.6, respectively, officially reviving the concept of "big screen" RPTVs that can hang on the wall. THe HD-58S998 will be available in January at an estimated $3,299, while the HD-65S998 will debut in March at approximately $4,199.

By a 3-2 vote, the Federal Communications Commission's Republican majority voted yesterday to supplant local regulation of television delivery services with their own rules. The move is expected to speed the entry of Verizon, AT&T, and other telcos into the turf of cable and satellite providers. Congress had been about to enact legislation with new video franchising rules until the regime change of the November elections. Now Democrats like Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA, new chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet) and John Dingell (D-MI, new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee) are pledging to take a close look at the FCC action in 2007. Along with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, other local-government associations, and various media watchdogs, they question whether the FCC had the statutory authority to change the rules. FCC chair Kevin Martin says telco TV will increase competition and lower rates for consumers, pointing to his agency's 2005 study on cable rates, which showed they had increased 93 percent over the previous decade. Not so, says Harold Feld of the Media Access Project: "The other guy just gradually raises his price...rather than having the higher price come down to the competitor's level." Overshadowing the cost issue is the equal-access issue: Can the telcos be counted on to "build out" to every home in a community under the new rules, as the old framework of local franchising and regulation had required them to do? The telcos have their own good cop, bad cop routine going on this subject. There's your hot topic for the New Year.