The "no wires" part is stressed because setting up the typical wired surround sound system is a royal pain. Drilling holes, crawling through spider-infested spaces, splicing wire, it’s all just a bunch of hooey. Having one central unit with a subwoofer providing (hopefully) decent surround sound performance–that’s not based on room dimensions, to boot–is a great idea. And that’s the Denon DHT-FS3 in a nutshell. No word on whether it’s coming to the US, but the price would likely be around $1,400, which is a bit much, but probably worth it.

I love surround sound in my living room. I pop in one of the Extended Editions of LOTR and poof! I’m off to Middle earth. It’s not the visuals that get me it’s the sound, in stereo, but sadly I have to be sitting in the perfect spot (the sweet spot) in order for me to get the full effect, and even if I move 2 cm to the right, sound quality drops dramatically and the whole experience is lost. Yet hope remains.

Sony wants to create a sweet-spot that follows you round the room, like the eyes in the Mona Lisa painting. How it works is that each speaker in the system has a transmitter that can be detected by the system. The listener also carries a tracker that allows the system to triangulate his or her position. It then adjusts the sound from the speakers to create a sweet-spot exactly where the listener happens to be standing and adjusts the sound accordingly as the person moves. Cool right? The patent is still pending on this sucker but I’ll bet it will be out right before Christmas.