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For better or worse, electronic display technology is going flat. Slowly but surely, as Asian manufacturers jettison older high-volume, low-profit picture- and projection-tube assembly lines, the venerable cathode-ray tube is being supplanted by such exotic items as Digital Light Processing (DLP), and liquid-crystal display (LCD) and plasma display panels (PDPs).

Spend $850 on a used car, and in a few days you'll spend another $850 on repair costs. Invest $850 in the stock market, and in a few weeks you'll have $600 worth. Spend $850 on Cambridge SoundWorks' new MegaTheater 510 DVD home theater system, and in a few minutes you'll have more entertainment than you bargained for.

When Apple introduced its lower-priced line of iMacs in 1998, it made a big step toward its goal of getting Macintosh computers in the hands of a wider range of users. The line has undergone a number of changes since then, with new iMacs sporting everything from psychedelic candy-color cases to powerful built-in video editing capabilities.

<A HREF="http://www.tivo.com">TiVo</A>'s stand-alone digital video recorders (DVRs) may not have taken the market by storm, but the core technology&mdash;a hard-disk recorder&mdash;has begun to appear in a range of new products now on the market or to be introduced soon.