Marantz With its silver finish and flat, brushed-aluminum faceplates, the Marantz Duetto stereo music system has an elegantly futuristic look. Both the SR110 two-channel receiver (top) and the CD110 CD player measure 8 1/4 x 3 x 12 2/8 inches and have drop-down covers over their front-panel controls.
Harman Kardon You'll feel surrounded by surround sound choices with Harman Kardon's AVR 520. The receiver decodes Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1- and 6.1-channel soundtracks, including DTS-ES Discrete. You'll need an outboard amp if you have one or two back surround speakers, though, as there are only five powered channels, rated to deliver 75 watts each into 8 ohms.
Yamaha Taking over the flagship position in Yamaha's receiver fleet is the RX-Z1. It decodes Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES (Matrix and Discrete) and performs Dolby Pro Logic II and DTS Neo:6 processing to deliver surround sound from stereo sources.
Green Design Prefer your TV not in view when not in use? Green Design's Series 2 media armoire can keep it out of sight, but the beautifully finished solid cherrywood cabinet may catch your eye anyway. The top part can hold most 36-inch direct-view TVs, and the lower shelves are adjustable for the height of your gear.
Sharp Flat-panel LCDs are starting to light up the TV world, and Sharp's 30-inch Aquos LC-30HV2U is one of the largest so far. With its wide 16:9 screen and 1,280 x 768-pixel (WXGA) resolution, the set is a respectable HDTV monitor, and its 3 1/2-inch depth makes it suitable for wall mounting.
Sunfire Forget about separate power amps for your back surround speakers-Sunfire's Ultimate Receiver is rated to deliver 200 watts each to seven channels, which should satisfy even the most demanding Dolby Digital EX or DTS-ES soundtrack.
Harman Kardon Master of the digital domain-Harman Kardon's DPR 1001 Digital Path Receiver is designed to keep digital signals digital right up to the final output stage. It's rated to deliver 50 watts each to seven channels and can decode Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES soundtracks.
JVC No room for one more component in your rack? How about half of one? At 2 1/4 inches thick, JVC's XV-N5SL DVD player won't crowd anyone. It still does everything a chubbier player can do, including deliver progressive-scan images through its component-video output and perform 2:3 pulldown to compensate for frame-rate differences between video and film.
Go-Video To get all your computer's digital pictures and media clips over to your A/V system you'll need some kind of complicated newfangled interface contraption, right? Nope-all you need is Go-Video's D2730 DVD player, which can connect to your PC either through its PC Card Ethernet adapter or wirelessly with an optional Wi-Fi PC Card.
Denon The first universal player from Denon, the DVD-2900 will play both DVD-Audio discs and Super Audio CDs, and it has Dolby Digital and DTS decoders, too.
Fujitsu It's a whole new look for Fujitsu's Plasmavision. The 42-inch P42VHA20 has a lighter silver finish than previous models and front-panel controls discreetly located in the bottom righthand corner. It's also just 3 inches thick.
Zenith Want a taste of DVD-Audio? Hey, at this price, why not? Zenith's affordable DVB252 five-disc DVD changer can handle the format, feeding high-res audio to your receiver or preamp through its multichannel analog audio output. And if you're sometimes in the mood for compressed audio, the player also reads MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) files on CD-Rs and CD-RWs.