New Gear

Can't we all just get along? Up to 12 of your home entertainment devices can do just that, thanks to Logitech's Harmony Advanced Universal Remote for Xbox 360 ($130). Simple setup has you connect the remote to your computer, enter the model numbers of your A/V gear, and answer some easy questions.

Speaker engineers have turned to a lot of different materials over the years to make their creations sound better, but JVC's come up with a new one: sake. By soaking sheets of birch wood in Japanese rice wine, the labcoats at JVC were able to press them together to make wooden drivers, said to improve sound quality because of their natural acoustic properties.

Designed for the media professional on the move, Dell's Inspiron e1705 notebook ($2,165) comes with Windows XP Media Center Edition and has a high-performance Intel Core Duo processor to power it. Games and videos will live large on the 17-inch widescreen display, and the top-notch Nvidia graphics card makes sure quick motion won't give you any visual hiccups. No time to boot up?

At $1,700, Sony's HDR-HC3 high-def camcorder is just $100 cheaper than the previous model, but it still takes a step forward by being the first HD cam with an HDMI output - the digital video connector most common on new HDTVs.

With a big 65-inch HD screen, the Brillian 6580iFB HDTV ($7,999) already has a lot going on, but there's more in the box to justify its hefty price tag. First of all, it's one of the new high-rez 1080p TVs. LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) technology keeps the pixels small and the space between them smaller, so images always look sharp and clear.