Dried squid and Japanese rice wine have brought success to a 20-year effort to form a speaker from a sheet of wood. Consumer electronics manufacturer JVC is currently offerering a desktop audio system that includes speakers made from sheets of birch to take advantage of the material’s desirable sonic qualities. The innovation was 20 years in the making because forming the wood sheets into a speaker cone proved daunting – they would crack or split when stamped. The solution turned out to be sake – Japanese rice wine.

Japan's Let's Corporation, that primarily works in telecommunications, has introduced the Ka-on device, which allows music to travel through flowers, eminating from the petals. The Ka-on (that literally means flower sound in Japanese) works by using a small circular coil that sits at the base of a flower vase. Hook the coil up to a television, CD player or stereo and sound vibrations travel up the water tubes within the stems, resulting in music seemingly coming from flower petals.

Polk Audio has introduced an entirely new line of RM Series six-piece, five channel home theater speaker systems featuring slim satellites and powered subwoofers. The new line features systems with satellites that may be wall, shelf, or stand mounted and for the first time includes a floor-standing model. The new RM systems are slim, shallow and styled to complement today's slim-line video products such as Plasma, LCD and DLP displays according to Polk.

Kenwood has debuted the NHT-815DV, dubbed the "home theater in a box." The NHT-815DV is a seven speaker, 6.1-channel system that has a progressive scan DVD player, plays streaming A/V media, and can display still photo files. In order to increase PC and video game compatibility with the home theater, it has an audio/video receiver with an ethernet connection, PCMCIA card slot and special features for video games.

Onkyo has introduced a home theater system that adds DVD video and multi-channel surround sound to any TV in minutes. The LS-V955 system consists of a one-piece integrated 40-Watt per channel surround receiver and progressive-scan DVD player, 150-Watt powered subwoofer, and five aluminum speakers designed to complement any video display.