James K. Willcox

If you've ever wondered whether it's worth it to splurge for premium audio and video cables, join the club. Given the Viagra-like claims of enhancement made by some manufacturers, it's often hard to separate the science from the fiction.

Clearly embedded somewhere in America's national psyche is an obsession with getting thin. How else do you explain both the celebrity of Nicole Richie and the craze for flat-panel TVs? In fact, with the increased focus on TVs slim enough to be mounted on a wall, the environment for rear-projection HDTVs has gotten a lot tougher.

In-wall speakers have come a long way since the first models, which were essentially re-purposed car-stereo speakers. That dramatic improvement over the past decade is due largely to the boom in "architectural" audio products driven by the advent of flat-panel TVs, any-room home theater systems, and whole-house audio.