LATEST ADDITIONS

DENON
College kids, listen up! Have you been trying to re-create your home theater's sound in the dorm room, only to realize that a "closet" measuring 15 feet wide by 20 deep isn't nearly enough room for all of the equipment you'll need? Denon's new D-M71DVXP DVD receiver system may be able to help you out. The system incorporates Dolby Virtual Speaker surround technology, which uses just two speakers to deliver a 5.1-channel surround sound experience. Features include an integrated DVD/receiver unit, two satellite speakers, and a subwoofer. To achieve quality sound and picture reproduction, the D-M71DVXP uses Analog Devices' Hammerhead SHARC 32-bit DSP audio processors. The two-way speakers each offer dual 2-inch midbass drivers and a 0.5-inch dome tweeter. A 100-watt subwoofer rounds out the audio component. The receiver has an aluminum faceplate; the subwoofer has a wood finish; and the satellite speakers are housed in aluminum with wood-finished end caps. The system retails for $999, and a two-channel version is also available for $699. Now you know what to ask for this holiday season.
Denon
(973) 396-0810
www.denon.com

Many home theater experts assert that a center channel loudspeaker belongs <I>behind</I> the screen&mdash;which is what commercial theaters do with them. Yet many acoustically-transparent perforated screens contribute moir&#233; interference to the image when used with fixed-pixel (LCD, DLP, and D-ILA) projectors.

Denon punches their ticket to the universal dance.

When you boil it all down, you realize that most format wars are somewhat ridiculous. Sure, it's fun to get the blood up every few years, and those of us in the A/V press certainly appreciate the opportunity to ramble on about these conflicts' various aspects and ramifications. Format wars ultimately belong in the software section, though, where the most that a wrong decision will cost you is the $20 or $30 that you spent on a disc, tape, or whatever else. When it comes to hardware, format wars can cost people hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. Ultimately, that's no good for either side, let alone the buying public as a whole. Thanks to universal disc players' rapid emergence, the previously contentious (and occasionally ugly) high-resolution-audio war is now software-based, as it should be. This doesn't mean that the DVD-Audio and SACD camps don't still take shots at one another. Now high-resolution-player buyers have the luxury of either ignoring the conflict altogether or simply enjoying it for what it always should've been, secure in the knowledge that big bucks are no longer on the line. With competition between the various and ever-growing assortment of universal-player makers, capitalism survives, but nobody gets burned. The result should be a boom in universal-player buying over the next couple of years.

The model designation "DM" might not sound like anything special, but it has a long history with B&W. Models such as the DM 6, fondly remembered by audiophiles as the "pregnant penguin," enjoyed a modest following in the 1970s, when then-small English speaker company Bowers & Wilkins was knocking out attendees at hi-fi show demonstrations. B&W is now, by most accounts, the biggest speaker company in the UK. Its model range has increased exponentially since those early days, but the DM prefix is still very much alive.