Stories by: Scott Bartley

BenQ (pronounced Ben-queue, in case you were afraid to ask) is making a concerted effort to become a hip, cool technology vendor, much like that benchmark for hip and cool technology vendors, Sony. While many of its products tend to fall more in the IT sector than the home entertainment arena, BenQ has a pretty decent DLP home theatre projector that deserves our attention.

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.

While flat-panel displays like plasma and LCD tend to hog the limelight, there are other big-screen TV options that provide high-quality output without the sky-high price tags - namely, rear-projection television (RPTV). If your last encounter with RPTV was with one of those beastly, bulky things of days gone by then you'll undoubtedly be stunned by Sony's latest addition to its RPTV line-up, the Grand Wega.

Stereo One, manufactured by Swedish speaker specialist Audio Pro, is a compact, all-in-one hi-fi system aimed at bringing audiophile-quality sound within reach of most people,. And when we say 'all-in-one hi-fi', we mean just that. There's no DVD player or video switching circuitry; there's just a CD, radio and amplifier in one, beautifully crafted aluminium chassis along with a couple of (also beautifully crafted) speakers.

Modern multiplex cinemas may have killed some of the grandeur associated with the movie-going experience (where are the curtains, we ask?) but even the smallest, blandest box of a theatre maintains that most essential element of the cinema's magic -- the projected image. It's not surprising, then, that a projector provides the most cinema-like experience at home.

Panasonic's PT-AE700E LCD projector has more tricks up its sleeve than $3899 should rightly buy. Successor to the highly regarded PT-AE500, the PT-AE700E, is a high-definition (its native resolution is 1280 x 720) projector that has impressed us immensely.

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.

The price tag of $10,000+ isn't chicken feed, but when you consider that this is the follow-up to a five-star unit that used to retail for a breathtaking $19,999, the value of this mk II will surely have the competition scrambling for red pens to slash prices.

At just $3999 at the time of writing, the PJ-TX100 offers one of the best price/performance ratios around. And it looks good too. A stylishly sloping fascia gives the projector a modern appearance that should suit just about any lounge room. The design is practical as well: the ventilation grills expel hot air out the front of the projector so it can be placed on a shelf without suffocating it and turning it into a few thousand dollars' worth of molten plastic.

A good subwoofer adds impact, substance and (quite literally) feeling to your aural experiences. A great subwoofer will do all this and then some--it'll even extend the frequency range of your system by alleviating some of the bass load from your main speakers. With such an important job in a hi-fi or home theatre system the task of finding the right subwoofer shouldn't be rushed. Performance is obviously key and should be uppermost in your mind when auditioning prospective purchases. In reality we're often dictated to by other, less exciting factors such as the size and layout of the lounge. If you find you're lacking in space and need a compact subwoofer that doesn't compromise on performance then we think we've found just the toy for you.

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 TVs 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.