Home theater buffs take note: United Plastics may have developed a new technology which could enhance your audio experience: acoustic panels you mount on your walls. These new My Theater Acoustic Panels are currently on display at CES.

The My Theater Acoustic Panels, according to United Plastics, improve “speaker sound quality by reducing reflective sound waves that bounce off hard surfaces like walls, floors, and tables.” Installation of these is reportedly a simple process of hanging them on the wall might like you would hang a piece of art.

Home theater stands are normally a pretty boring item to read about. Sony has put a flair though to a new one it is displaying at CES. It’s called the Sony Sound Wall RHT-S10.

The Sony Sound Wall RHT-S10 is a home theater stand with an included surround sound system. It specifically offers “Sony’s first 5.1 channel surround sound system to offer built-in speakers, an amplifier and a subwoofer in one slim speaker package.” It is attached to “a free-standing wall facade that also serves as a mount for a television. Wires are hidden behind the wall and connected to an integrated A/V rack anchored at the base of the media stand.”

Bowers & Wilkins is showcasing some rather interesting new pieces of audio gear during CES. One of these is the Bowers & Wilkins Liberty, a new integrated wireless entertainment system which will launch this fall.

The Bowers & Wilkins Liberty is a 5.1 system which sports wireless, cable-free speakers. The range of products in this system can include four speaker models and one combined digital radio and disc player with a wireless transmitter. The four speakers are the three-way, floor standing XTW 8, the two-way XTW 2 and XTW Centre bookshelf/stand speakers, and the PVW 1 subwoofer.

Little by little technology continues to work towards integrating your digital life with the not-yet digital portions of your world, and Logitech is bringing it a step closer this year by unveiling the Lotitech Squeezebox Duet music system. This new system being launched at CES 2008 consists of a receiver box and a handheld controller that brings digital music from your computer to your living room, entertainment center, kitchen or just about anywhere you like to listen to music around your house.

The receiver is connected via WiFi (802.11g) to your computer (PC, Mac, Linux) and can be configured to find and play your personal music collection wirelessly. The receiver is then connected to your home entertainment center through standard audio cables to bring your digital music out of your office and into the rest of your home.

So now that there are becoming more and more high quality movies, games and music available to download from the intertubes onto your computer, the next thing a person finds themselves needing (aside from getting that content over to their living room) is a higher quality display and sound system to take advantage of all this advanced media technology. This year at CES, Logitech is coming through with the sound portion of this equation by launching the Logitech Z Cinema surround sound system.

This new speaker system consists of just two satellite speakers (no rears) and a subwoofer along with what Logitech calls “SRS TruSurround HD” to put your desk chair in the middle of the surround sound action. The speakers have a 180W hybrid Class D + Class AB tri-amp, two-way satellite speakers and an 8″ subwoofer along with 24-bit audio via a USB connection. If for some reason you are unable to play your digital audio through the PC that the speakers are connected to, you can also just connect the player to an input jack to play directly through the speakers. Also, in the event that you don’t already have a media center remote control with your system, Logitech is throwing one is as well.

Polk Audio is always known for bringing excellent products to the Consumer Electronics Show to show off. It has a new two-piece surround sound system set to unveil known as the Polk Audio SurroundBar 360 DVD Theater. It is priced at around $1,200.

The Polk Audio SurroundBar 360 DVD Theater has a “multichannel loudspeaker (44 1/2″ W x 4 7/8″ D x 4 1/8″ H) and a separate, compact electronics console (16 1/2″ W x 11 1/2″ D x 3 3/16″ H) that contains an integrated DVD/CD player, SDA signal-processing amplifier, AM/FM radio, and a host of digital, analog, USB, and video inputs.” That’s right from the horse’s mouth folks - all of that in a tight little design which will make you drool over its very cool looking gloss black enclosure.

If you’re getting frustrated with the limited feature set of your current set-top box from your cable company, Motorola is showcasing the next generation of set top boxes for the cable industry this year at the CES 2008, bringing their first MPEG-4 box for interactive in-home television programming. The new DCX series set-top boxes support high-def video content, surround sound and can act as a hub to share media between it and other compatible devices in the home.

One of the biggest complaints we’ve heard about DVRs from cable providers is the inability to easily share recorded content to anywhere else other than the DVR itself. The new DCX series boxes allow users to not only share the content with other devices so you can watch it in another room, but it also lets the owners add their own media to the device and share it as well.

At some point you should probably upgrade that ratty old home media room recliner you have to something a little more sleek, modern and comfortable. Salamander Designs is showcasing one such new piece of furniture at CES - the Olivia.

The Olivia, which did not have pricing information available, can be customized in a variety of ways, according to its maker. It sports a seating surface measuring 23.5 inches wide and needs just three inches of clearance behind it to recline. It features both a standard manual recline mechanism, and a powered mechanism controlled by a switch in the arm. A hidden footrest automatically extends as the seat reclines.

Lyngdorf Audio is showcasing at the Consumer Electronics Show two new home theater components for those looking for more edgy gear. This items are the TDA-2300 digital integrated amplifier and D-1 home theater processor.

The Lyngdorf D-1 is a home theater processor which will price at around $17,000. This high end home theater component is a multi-channel unit which is all digital, meaning there are no analog to digital or D/A conversion processes which occur. Its maker says this provides for “an unbroken digital signal path of the very highest quality all the way from the source to the speaker terminals.” It also includes a room correction system to help remove “any room-related distortion and coloration of the sound.”

A company by the name of Ziova has unveiled what it is calling a new high definition network media player which can sport an internal hard drive. The ClearStream CS615 is expected to price at around $330.

The ClearStream CS615 from Ziova is powered by the Sigma Designs 8634 chipset. It is a home networked media player which brings your media files to your home theater system. You can get entertainment via the 10/100 Ethernet wired networking, an internal hard drive and a USB 2.0 hard drive connection. Video output options include HDMI and component video.

How many times have you cursed HDTV manufacturers while trying to install HDMI cables into those hard to reach HDMI ports on the back? Cables to Go thinks it may have an answer to this home theater issue by unveiling a line of rotating HDMI and DVI adapters. These adapters all price at around $13.

The Cables to Go HDMI and DVI 360-Degree Rotating Connectors are designed to enable 360 degree rotation and 90 degree bending so one can more easily connect HDMI and DVI cables to sources. Each one sports a center ball joint design and appropriate connectivity ports in its body shape.

Escient, a developer of networked media products, is planning to ship early next year a new line of media management devices which will let one “play and import all their movies, videos, music, and photos using the front-panel drive and home network.” This new Vision line of products is set to price between $2,000 and $8,000.

The Escient Vision line consists of seven products, including two versions of an all-in-one server/player, Models VS-100 and VS-200, as well as the VC-1 networked audio/video zone player and the large-capacity VX-600 media server. All of these devices will sport a new high definition user interface and also allow one to access streaming music through Rhapsody.

AV Toolbox has introduced to the market a video scaler designed to take both analog and digital video signals and convert them to 1080p. The new AVT-3900 is priced at $635.

The AV Toolbox AVT-3900, currently being distributed in the UK, has specific video inputs which accept “HDMI, DVI (via DVI to HDMI cable), PC generated RGB (up to WUXGA), HD component (YPbPr/YCbCr, 480i up to 1080p), S-video and composite video.” All of these signals are processed via the AVT-3900’s internal scaling engine and the device outputs 1080p with supports for HDMI version 1.2.

Pass Laboratories, an audio equipment specialty company, announced a new integrated amplifier for high end home audio systems. The Pass Labs INT-150 is priced at around $6,500.

The Pass Labs INT-150 is the company’s first integrated amplifier. It is rated at 150 watts per channel into 8 ohms and 300 watts into 4 ohms. It is equipped with a special circuit which reportedly will improve performance by lowering distortion and noise processed by the amplifier. Input, output and AC connectors are on the rear of the device.

Not all home theater systems, especially older ones, have video upscaling as a feature in either the DVD player or A/V receiver. For those people Gefen has announced its new Home Theater Scaler Plus, priced at around $500.

The Gefen Home Theater Scaler Plus scales video signals to high resolutions ranging from 480i to 1080p, converting analog signals to digital. It comes equipped with with inputs for component video with left/right audio, composite/s-video with left/right audio, and two HDMI inputs each with digital TOSlink and S/PDIF audio. There’s also HDMI output and the video scaler is HDCP compliant.