When I was a little kid, my grandmother had a gigantic wooden TV cabinet in her living room.  This monster had a TV screen in the middle flanked by two built-in speaker cabinets, with a radio tuner and a turntable hidden inside the top by sliding wood doors.  It was an incredible piece of furniture, the kind of immovable edifices they just don’t build anymore.  When I thought no one was looking, I’d always turn up the volume as loud as it would go and feel the floor shake under my feet.  Only a grandmother would let a kid get away with that more than once.

Nowadays, there have been great advances in TV picture quality.  My LCD flatscreen’s picture is pristine and beautiful.  But somewhere along the way, TV makers forgot about the sound.  The puny speakers on my set sound tinny and flat.  Television is composed of picture AND sound… so why all the emphasis on one and not the other?  And have you SEEN what they charge for a decent 5.1 receiver?  Luckily, the entire issue is solved by the Xitel SOUNDaround audio processor and a nice bookshelf stereo I bought online.  As our daily deal, this incredible device is only $23.99. At that price, would it have REALLY been so hard for Samsung to build one into my 40-in TV?