The best gear of the year, as picked by the editors of Home Entertainment.

Premium Blend

The NaimUniti combines all your stereo favorites in to one unifying package.

Free your iPod

The W2 is a wireless adapter that clicks into the bottom of your iPod.

The audio is sent wirelessly to the receiver unit, which plugs into an AC outlet and your receiver, or anything with a mini-jack or RCA inputs.

Presto! Wireless iPod audio.

Olive You So Much: A romance in two parts between a girl and the Olive 4, a sexy young multi-room music server.

At the risk of sounding clichéd, I’ve discovered there is such a thing as love at first sight.

Music in eight rooms and looks to match the iPod.

The iPod has had the same transformative effect on multiroom audio that the Mac had on computers: Both changed an unfriendly, daunting entity into something the average person could relate to. While many manufacturers have brought the iPod’s basic functionality to their remotes and keypads, few have captured the look and feel.

Count NuVo Technologies among the few who have escaped the black hole of generic white faceplates.

A Smartphone for Your Living Room

Today’s consumer doesn’t just want it all; he wants it all in one package. No longer can a product just be a cell phone, gaming console or TV. To really sell, CE devices must wear many hats—and wear them all well.

Velocity Micro wears many hats. They offer PCs for business, gaming and digital media. But they also offer a dedicated home theater model that’s more media center than PC: the Fuzebox.

The Crestron Experience Center in Las Vegas is one of the few places in the world delivering hands-on demos of the wonders of home automation.

With its new Las Vegas Experience Center, Crestron—which in home automation is perhaps even more pervasive than Microsoft is in the computer business—seeks to make its creations more accessible to dealers and customers. The Experience Center is one of only a few places in the world where one can witness home automation at work.

Our 10 Best Gear Awards

The best gear of the year.

Serve it Up – Audio and Video Servers Galore

Maybe you've got a huge collection of digital music, and you'd really love to listen to it throughout your home, instead of simply on your iPod.

Perhaps you want to rip your DVD collection to disc and secret the cases away in storage.

No matter the particulars, chances are you have digital media you want to enjoy in the more comfortable parts of your home—away from the desktop. Enter media servers.

When it comes to summer fun, there should be no strings attached.

Who doesn’t like the idea of spending a warm summer’s evening out on the deck, with the grill fired up and your favorite tunes filling the airwaves? While the idea is nice, the execution often leaves us a bit intimidated.