New Gear

What's New

New Product: Jamo Reference R 909 Dipole Speaker
- By Ken Richardson
- Posted April 4, 2006
It's the side view of a speaker with no sides - and no back either! Jamo's dipolar Reference R 909 ($15,000 a pair) has two 15-inch woofers, a 5.5-inch midrange, and a 1-inch tweeter. But it doesn't have a traditional cabinet.

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New Product: Logitech Harmony 890 Remote Control
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 4, 2006
With a sleek silver-gray finish, full-color LCD screen, and seductive curves, the Harmony 890 is ready for the centerfold of Remote Monthly. But it's not just another pretty wand - the 890 sends commands to your system via both infrared and RF (radio-frequency) signals, so you don't even have to be in the same room as your gear.

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New Product: Pioneer Inno Portable XM Radio
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 4, 2006
If you married your iPod but sometimes find yourself cheating with satellite radio, there's now a way to simplify your gadget love life. Pioneer's Inno is a portable XM tuner/MP3 player with a hard disk that stores both recorded XM programs (up to 50 hours!) and MP3 or WMA music files. You can bookmark songs in the XM recordings and mix them with your own music into playlists.
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New Product: Toshiba Gigashot GSC-R60 Hard-Disk Camcorder
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 4, 2006
Flash memory is convenient but fills up quickly. Tape is ... ugh, tape. For camcorders, the best medium might be a hard disk, and Toshiba's GSC-R60 Gigashot cam stores up to 13 hours of high-quality MPEG-2 recordings on its 60-GB drive. And for still pictures? Just snap away, my friend. Just snap away ...
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New Product: Lyra X3000 Portable Video Player
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 4, 2006
Seems like a new portable video player drops from the sky every few minutes these days, but RCA's latest video Lyra has something worth catching: DirecTV2Go, which later this year will let you offload recorded programs from DirecTV PVRs to watch on the Lyra's 3.625-inch screen or any TV you hook it up to.

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New Product: Energy RC-Mini Speakers
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 4, 2006
For the past few years, the trend in speaker design has been to make models that blend into the environment - from super-flat on-wall speakers to paintable in-walls that disappear entirely. But the Energy RC-Mini speakers ($200 to $250 each) scream that loudspeakers can be beautiful!

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New Product: Zvox Mini Portable Speaker
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 4, 2006
As convenient as it is to have music and video on things like iPods and cell phones, there are always times when you want some seriously big sound. That's where the Zvox Mini portable speaker ($200) can help.

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New Product: Elan XM-R3 XM Radio Tuner
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 4, 2006
Can't get enough satellite radio? The Elan XM-R3 XM radio tuner ($1,550) was made just for you. The rack-mountable unit has a trio of XM tuners onboard so you can stream separate XM channels to three different rooms in your house simultaneously.

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New Product: PSB VisionSound VS300 Speakers
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 4, 2006
You hear a lot about how good speakers look on a wall. What you don't hear is that wall mounting can affect a speaker's performance. Good thing the PSB VisionSound VS300 speakers (center and front, $749 apiece) have special circuitry to compensate for any ill effects (a switch defeats it for off-wall mounting).

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New Product: Crosley Explorer 1 AM/FM/XM Radio
- By Rob Medich
- Posted April 4, 2006
Yes, it's two, two radios in one: the style is retro, but the technology is Space Age. Debuting at the Consumer Electronics Show and set for a spring launch, this tabletop model from Crosley offers AM and FM, but it's the company's first product equipped for XM satellite radio - hence its name, Explorer 1 ($250).

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New Product: Onkyo CS-V720 Minisystem
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 3, 2006
Sure, the Onkyo CS-V720 minisystem ($400) is willing and able to serve as a DVD/CD player, but this sleek little number doesn't merely spin discs. It's also XM radio-ready, which means that when you get an XM Connect & Play antenna ($20) and a subscription to the satellite service ($12.95 a month), 160 channels of music, sports, news, and more will be at your fingertips.

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New Product: Samsung HP-R8082 80-inch Plasma HDTV
- By Peter Pachal
- Posted April 3, 2006
You've gotta wonder what Freud would say about all these TV makers trying to outdo each other with the biggest screen. Then again, you also have to admit that an 80-inch plasma TV is never just an 80-inch plasma TV - not when it's the biggest you can get. Taking plasma into the 80s is the (holy crap!) $150,000 Samsung HP-R8082, whose screen has 1,920 x 1,080 pixels.

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