Peter Pachal

CONTACT The Harmony 1000 controller is so sexy, the instant you see it, you'll wanna touch it. That's encouraged, of course, since its 3.5-inch screen is a touchpanel, sporting the simple activity-based menus that are Harmony's claim to fame.

LARGE AND IN CHARGE Are you serious about home theater? No, are you serious? Okay then, you may be worthy to own the Sunfire Theater Grand Receiver 3. Among its legendary features: HDMI switching, three (!) subwoofer outputs, and a power rating that'll make lesser receivers cower - 200 watts for each of the seven channels.

SERVICE CENTER Harman Kardon's first media server takes your discs and makes them better. Any CD you feed it will be ripped to the convenient 160-GB hard disk. Any DVD you feed it will be upconverted to 720p HD format through the HDMI output. But streaming is this box's main mission: four rooms, four streams - mix 'em however you want.

KALEID-O-SET In the modern TV world of huge screens and off-the-scale resolution, color matters more than ever. The palette in Mitsubishi's 57-inch 1080p set is run by a 6-Primary Color System, which creates the "subtractive" colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) directly instead of mixing red, green, and blue.