Awesome Home Theater

Amp up your living room audio with this affordable system that sits underneath TVs weighing up to 55 lb, and provides room-filling sound that blows away built-in TV speakers. It also doubles as a Bluetooth speaker for music. Full review on Technabob.

The Samsung NW700 Soundbar Sound+ is an upcoming wall-mountable soundbar. Its slim, narrow and monochrome style makes it a perfect match for today’s slim HDTVs. It also has a built-in woofer and has active distortion-cancelling.

An idiotproof way to stream videos and music from a Mac to a variety of TVs, media players and speakers. Just drag and drop files, select a destination and start playing. It works with the Apple TV and Google Chromecast, as well as devices that support AirPlay and Google Cast.

Sony’s quirky personal speakers give you surround sound without taking up space or completely cutting off ambient noise. The SRS WS-1 has 2W drivers and vibration motors with three levels of strength. It comes with a wireless transmitter that can pair with two units at once.

Hisense’s new 4K TV is actually a home theater package built around an impressive short throw laser projector. It comes with a 100″ Black Diamond projection screen. The projector itself has Harman Kardon speakers with a separate subwoofer, a TV tuner and streaming apps.

Roku upgrades its Streaming Stick with 4K and HDR playback, improved reception and a more useful remote control. The Streaming Stick+ has a Wi-Fi booster in its power cord, and the new Roku remote comes with voice search and TV power and volume controls.

The successor to the Play:1, the Sonos One is a great speaker and a great listener. It comes with Amazon’s Alexa, so you can use your voice to play music, search online, control smart appliances and more. It will soon be updated to have Google Assistant as well.

Remember when home entertainment systems were gigantic showpieces? Ruark remembers. That’s why it keeps cranking out its R7 Radiogram. The latest version not only plays CDs and radio. It also has Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, USB, RCA and optical inputs.

They’re not the slimmest TVs and don’t support HDR, but Amazon and Element Electronics’ 4K smart TVs are still great deals, especially for Amazon Prime subscribers. They run Amazon’s Fire OS and have support for voice commands via the remote.

Oppo’s top of the line media player plays UHD Blu-ray discs as well as digital 4K video, and supports both HDR10 and the Dolby Vision HDR spec. It also has individual 7.1 channel analog out, audio-only HDMI out, one DAC each for stereo and 7.1, and a built-in headphone amp.

A flat speaker that’s meant to sit and disappear under your big HDTV. It’s meant to serve both as a home theater speaker and as a music playback device just like other Sonos speakers. It has six mid-range drivers, three tweeters, and one woofer. Drops 4/4/17.

Roku overhauls its lineup of streaming media players. The Streaming Stick is still there, but its less portable siblings now come in five variants, from the $30 1080p-capable Roku Express to the $130 Roku Ultra, which supports 4K and HDR and has voice search.

Super Gamer Builds and Sony installed a PS4 and a 4K TV inside a detailed replica of the treasure chests in Uncharted 4. The custom setup will be given away to a Sony sweepstakes winner. Skip to 7:19 for the reveal.

The Ekko Hub is a home audio streaming solution. It comes with two or four wireless receivers that each have their own volume and mute controls, and a base station with 3.5mm, RCA and optical inputs. It also works with DLNA and Apple AirPlay.

An extremely versatile pair of powered monitors. The R-15PM has RCA, optical, USB, 3.5mm and Bluetooth inputs. Its 1″ tweeter and 5.25″ woofer are powered by a 50W amp, while the 13″x 7″x 8″ cases each have a rear-firing port for added bass.

Channels is a $15 app that lets you watch live TV on the new Apple TV with the help of an HDHomeRun device and an HD antenna or a cable connection. The latest update added buffering so you can pause, rewind and fast forward live shows.

Blipcast is a small device that sends sound from your TV, home theater receiver, or anything with an audio output to one or more Android or iOS devices so you can listen without disturbing others.

Time to put your 4K TV to work. Samsung’s UBD-K8500 is the world’s first Ultra HD Blu-ray player, offering dramatically better image quality than streamed content. Over 100 movies will be available in the new format. The player can also upscale DVD and Blu-ray movies.

GoldenEar’s $2000 freestanding subwoofer will shake your world with a pair of 12″ bass drivers and two 12″ passive radiators. All four are diametrically arranged resulting in a balanced output and a stable cabinet. It’s powered by a 1600W amp and a 56-bit DSP.

CAST is a supercharged version of Chromecast. It lets you share videos from streaming services (Netflix, NBA, YouTube etc.) with up to six other people so you can watch together even if they don’t have subscriptions to those services. They claim it’s legal, but caveat emptor.

The new TiVo Bolt is a 4K-ready DVR and streaming media player with two big time-saving features. Its SkipMode can skip entire commercial breaks on some shows, while QuickMode speeds up videos by 30% but without the high-pitched voice side effect.

A highly customizable universal remote control. Thanks to its E-ink touchscreen and customizing app, you can choose to include only the controls you want per device, or even place buttons for different devices on one page. Sadly it’s exclusive to Japan for now.

The YSP-5600 not only has a whopping 46 speakers, it also uses Dolby Atmos technology to bounce sound around the room. The result is a convincing emulation of a 7.1.2 setup that left folks at the IFA trade show dumbfounded. Drops 12/15 for $1700.