If you have dropped big bucks on your big screen 1080p HDTV and Blu-ray player but are still rocking with the plain vanilla 5.1 surround sound you are missing half the coolness of many Blu-ray movies—the HD sound. Sure Dolby Digital 5.1 sounds pretty good, but wouldn’t you rather get the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio goodness form your Blu-ray titles?

To do that odds are you are going to need a new AV receiver and Harman Kardon announced a nice one recently called the AVR 354. The 354 features decoding for both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master audio and an on screen graphical menu and a new iPod dock called The Bridge II. The iPod dock allows docking of the iPhone and most other iPods and shows the iPod video, images and menu screens on your TV.

The receiver also features HDMI 1.3a, 1080p pass through and 1080p video upscaling. The receiver uses Faroudja DCDi Cinema processing and has EzSet/EQ equalization and multiroom capability. The receiver is also capable of 7.1 surround sound. The receiver will retail for $899, The Bridge II alone retails for $129 and is included with the receiver.

Harman Kardon