Rich Warren

What can you get from a single box not much larger than a DVD player with three small drivers firing forward and a woofer port firing rearward? If the box is the Zvox 315 Sound Console, you get more sound than you might think - full, wide stereo and a surprising amount of surround sound.

A few minutes into Cold Mountain, a U.S. Civil War version of The Odyssey , the Union Army detonates massive explosives hidden beneath a Confederate encampment. To say that I flinched would be an understatement - diving for cover was more like it.

Most of the buzz about home-network entertainment applications has focused on wireless Wi-Fi connections and traditional wired Ethernet networks. But a potentially revolutionary new technology called Power Line Communications (PLC) was spotlighted at Panasonic's press conference the day before the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show opened to the public.

The forces competing to win the prize of the next-generation DVD - the disc that will carry high-definition movies and other HD content - squared off with competing press conferences on the first day of the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show. As in exhibition sports, they played real ball, but the score counted little toward the championship.