For once, a development in audiophile-land that doesn't cost as much as a house: a working group of manufacturers and labels has been dedicated to creating an open standard for DSD-over-USB. Why should you care? DSD is the music file format which was always meant to be the successor to CDs. It's what'll allow engineers to create for-real multichannel recordings that you can use with your home theater rig. It's languished on the fringes because it's only available in optical format (SACD).

Nobody but lunatics like me wants a new optical format for music, and so SACD has gone more or less nowhere. However, downloadable music is all the rage and multi-channel is a real "get." And, it almost certainly won't cost an arm and a leg to get something that'll play it. Woot!