Stories by: Scott Bartley

LCD televisions have been hogging the limelight recently and it's easy to forget that for all their glory they're only now catching up to the level of image quality that plasma TVs have enjoyed for a while. In that time, plasma manufacturers haven't exactly been sitting on their collective hands either and Panasonic has just released its shiny new eighth-generation Viera plasma displays to market.

Modern multiplex cinemas may have killed some of the grandeur associated with the movie-going experience but even the smallest, blandest box of a theatre maintains that most essential element of the cinema's magic - the projected image.

Before the RV-8, American high-end audio manufacturer Lexicon hadn't done much in the way of home theatre receivers; in fact, it had done nothing at all. So the release of the RV-8 seven-channel receiver marks something of a milestone for the company as it ventures out of the civilised world of audio separates and into the lawless Wild West of all-in-one home theatre amplifiers/processors. However, if the multichannel market is the audio world's equivalent of the town of San Miguel, then Lexicon need hold no fear because the RV-8 is undoubtedly a gunman of considerable talent.

GTR - FIA GT Racing Game started life as a mod for EA's Formula 1 2002 racing sim. Based on the FIA's real life GT Racing series in Europe, the mod proved a hit and became wildly popular. It didn't take long for the SimBin development team (the guys who made the mod) to realise they were onto a good thing and they promptly decided to turn it into a standalone racing game.

It's tough being a home theatre addict. No sooner have we forked out big bucks for a new piece of hardware than a newer, cheaper version with more features arrives. While this is bad for those with ink still drying on the till receipt, it's great for others just about to lay down the credit card. The news, therefore, that ProjectionDesign has upped the features of the superb Model One projector and dropped the price by a substantial margin may or may not cause a certain amount of consternation.

Hot on the heels of the five-star Panasonic AE700 projector comes yet another low-priced, quality LCD-based model, the Hitachi PJ-TX100. In fact the circa $5,000 home theatre market is burgeoning and if you've been holding off making that big-screen purchase while you wait for prices to drop and quality to improve, now could be the time to pull out the plastic. At just $3,999 the PJ-TX100 offers one of the best price/performance ratios around.

American loudspeaker manufacturer Magnepan is famed for its stylish, planar-magnetic, "Magneplanar" flat-panel speakers. The problem is, Maggies tend to be rather large. Without a traditional woofer-type cone to move air, they require a large surface area and a substantial amount of space around them, because Magneplanar speakers are dipole (sound emanates equally from the front and rear of the speaker). With this, and the growing popularity of flat-panel TV in mind, Magnepan created the MGMC1, a much smaller wall-mounted speaker (although still 117cm tall and 25cm wide). A simple hinge mechanism on one edge of the cabinet allows the entire thing to be mounted on the wall and the panel angled in towards the listener.

The last couple of years have seen a change in the way electronics manufacturers approach designing their home theatre devices and plasma TVs; surround-sound systems and projectors are all more user-friendly than ever as they jostle for the consumer's attention. Panasonic has just released a new LCD projector that has more tricks up its sleeve than $$3,899 should rightly buy.

For LCD, it's a case of back to the future. The Screenplay 5000 home theatre projector from Infocus is the first one we've looked at from this company that makes use of an LCD projection system instead of the more common (at least when it comes to Infocus) and newer DLP technology.

If you've recently bought a DVD drive or even a graphics card, you probably received a bundled version of either PowerDVD or WinDVD. Why, then, would you want to go out and buy the same software? Well, the bundled version is almost always a generation or two older and doesn't provide value-added features or support for 5.1 audio.

If you're currently shopping for a mid/high-end home theatre system, or are perhaps looking to move onto something more serious after an initial foray into the wonderfully addictive world of home theatre, then the Sherwood Newcastle P-965 and A-965 combo could be just the thing you need.