The Audioholics store has lifted the lid on the new Marantz SR4003 receiver. Right up front, you'll notice the design borrows from Marantz's Reference series of components, so now you can satisfy your champagne-like tastes without breaking your beer-like budget. Joe Six Pack won't feel robbed by the feature set either -- the SR4003 is a seven-channel, 80-Watt number with a triplet of HDMI 1.3a inputs and a single output. With some 16,000-microfarads in the amplifier section's capacitor banks, those are pretty generous 80-Watts, too. Of course, there's an array of video upconversion and autocalibration niceties for you, too. For Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA, you'll have to use LPCM, but something had to be cut out to fit the budget. In all, the generous package of specs behind the nice-looking face and a $550 price sound like a good formula to us.

Happy surprise -- there's no need to wait for next month's CEDIA show to get details on Yamaha's BD-S2900 Blu-ray player, since Audioholics released them from its own stockroom. The online store that goes alongside the site has them in stock and ready to ship next week. The pricing is a good example of "under-promise, over-deliver" joy as well -- the MSRP on the deck is $1,200, but you can get one on your doorstep for just a nickel under $1,000. That's still not cheap, especially for a Profile 1.1 unit, but we don't expect many potential buyers are seriously weighing the BD-S2900 against a Funai NB500 (or one if its variants), or even a PS3. If you want to get in on some gloating in the comments, break out that credit card and prepare a spot in your equipment rack!

Read - Audioholics announcement
Read - Yamaha BD-S2900 store page

For most folks, it's hard to think of any $5,500 receiver as a "value purchase," but as we've seen before, "value" can get pretty slippery at the high end. Audioholics has put up a very detailed review of Denon's flagship AVR-5308CI receiver, just to test the value of the unit. If you want need a reference-quality centerpiece to your HT setup, we'd be hard-pressed to disagree with the analysis. First, think of the unit as a top-of-the-line Denon AVP-A1HDCI preamp/processor and a seven-channel amplifier that share a power cord, all in one tidy (and massive) chassis. Now consider the $7,500 price tag on that AVP-A1HDCI -- that's $2,000 more than the receiver, and you still have to shell out for an amplifier (or seven). Of course, maybe after the first $5,500, you won't feel the additional $2,000. Somehow we don't think that's true -- check your bank balance and hit the link for the review, not necessarily in that order.

There's udio lot to be said for speakers that are designed to work well together in your AV setup. And if you hang around internet forums for a while, you'll come across internet-only speaker companies that promise tremendous value; but can you trust the interwebs? Judging by the full and exhaustive review by Audioholics, you can when it comes to internet-direct vendor Emotiva's upcoming ER 5.0 speaker system. They may not have been wowed by the aesthetics, but once the lights went down and the sound went up, the system acquitted itself quite nicely. For $1250, you get three monitors across the front and two bipolar/dipolar speakers in the back; well-assembled and including real-world usable features like boundary compensation and tweeter response adjustments. The system did well on the test bench, too, turning in some respectably flat curves. It's always refreshing to see what good design can do with 5.25-inch woofers, 1-inch tweeters and sealed enclosures. Hit the link for the full review.

CES is filled with tons of demos and things to play with. Not everything goes as well as planned however. (think Bill Gates and Windows 98)

Audioholics has a great list of their experiences with less then stellar demos. Of course Monster Cable is on the list with their "Our cable vs their cable routine." Even big name players like Toshiba's demo of HD DVD did not work. A Microsoft boy put in a HD DVD disk and nothing happened! (Once again, think of Bill Gates plugging in that scanner to demo Windows 98).

Some things on the list will just make you smile and shake your head.

[Thanks for the tip Akia!]