That's a lot less pain than I anticpated based on the brutal european pricing.

There is some serious competition north of $5k. The extra-awesome Bryston B100SST/DA comes to mind. Point well taken about NAD's ability to translate technology into their more affordable platforms; they really know how to spread the fun around to listeners with wallets of all sizes. I look forward to some new NAD receivers with utterly stupid power output. Well implemented class D on-board amplification could go a long way towards closing the gap between integrateds and separates.

I owned an Adcom 545II and a 565 preamp for many years and can attest to the former greatness of Adcom. I've since moved way up the food chain, but were it not for Adcom, I never would have gotten interested in the hobby. I wish them the best of luck and I hope they sell a ton of them.

A balanced power system the way to go. I use an Equitech 1.5Q, but BPT also makes fantastic equipment. The price of admission is eye-popping, the performance and durability is there to back it up.

That makes more sense than the current 7.1 arrangement, and is more likely to be properly implemented than the current 7.1 system that piles all the speakers up around the back and sides of the room; speakers everywhere but in the direction the director has the camera pointed.

That said, we continue to add speakers and the requsite channels of amplification with no regard for the impact that has on the quality of each channel in a consumer's system. Anybody who's listened to a Blu-Ray through a top-notch stereo system understands what focusing resources on inproving the quality of the first to channels can do for the consumer's movie experience. Not to say that multi-channel surround doesn't do some great things, in fact it can be awesome. However, we are asking consumers to buy into a more-is-better philosophy because it's an easier sell than better-is-better.

Consumers are still feeling the burn from the previous generation of pre-pro's that were sold as "future proof" because they could handle new codecs via firmware updates. Then we came to them with HDMI and said," that pre-pro you bought a year or two ago is a now a multi-thousand dollar boat anchor."

I'm no luddite; I am all for progress and this system is clearly the ne plus ultra for multi-channel audio. I just wonder if this is the answer to question that consumers aren't yet asking.

Who is Palm? I suppose I can Wiki them on my iPhone.

I live in the uber-sticks, where I enjoy 1Mbs DSL as part of what I not-so-affectionately refer to as a Land Line MegaBundle for a $117.
The happiest day of my life was when I saw a Comcast truck parked in the ditch near my house, and learned that Comcast bought the
little mom and pop cable company in my area. I'd cut off one of anything I have two of for even a 10Mbs connection.

As long as every truck and bus pays $1.30 per mile, I'm totally cool with my 1.3 cents per miles.

"Road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power of the axle load. A 20,000 lb axle causes 16 times as much damage as a 10,000 axle, and 160,000 times as much damage as a 1,000 lb axle (wider tires mitigate the effect slightly). The net result is that 99% of the traffic damage to roads and highways comes from trucks and buses."

Nobody blinks an eye when a low traffic density railroad line is abandoned.

Q: "Why should the taxpayers foot the bill for rail service that isn't profitable service?"

A: Every rail car you see moving represents approximately 4 semi loads of cargo. The car you drive represents a (2000lb axle load x 2 axles). Without a special DOT over-weight variant, a semi represents an 16,000lb axle load x 5 axles.

Without burying you in additional math, rest assured that motorists could pay to build trains out of solid gold and still save money on highway construction. The bill is coming due for all of the railroad lines we've ripped up over the past 50 years. Oh, and please enjoy your government GPS tracking units as a courtesy parting gift for supporting 50 years of misguided transportation policy.

P.S. The next time you are sitting behind a semi in the road construction it caused, consider that trains are 16 times more fuel efficient per ton/mile than trucks.

Like every other piece of equipment; if you haven't auditioned it, you don't have a valid opinion.

I do not think the onslaught of cheap hardware this holiday season will drive attachment rates as much as might be hoped. People who can nott afford $500, but can afford $250 for a BD player are not the demographic that can drop $30 on a movie every week. The post holiday season might see some nice revenue bumps for BlockBuster/Netflix, but don't expect disks to fly off the shelves at retailers.

Another sobering statistic; HDTV market penetration currently stands at only 34%. While that number may jump around the time of the analog cut off; but there are still a great number of TV owners who really aren't even equipped to go Blu.