Of course, completely wireless home theater entertainment is as appealing as it is far away to materialize at the moment. And this is partially because the home theater system was on principle made for the kind of listener and viewer that cannot live without having the highest quality image and audio at all times. A quality level that wireless systems are not ready to provide yet.

But partially de-wiring solutions already exist, as we said, for the surround (or rear home theater) speakers.

Here are some DVD player units with wireless surround sound speakers:

The Pioneer HTD-630DV has only the rear center speaker wireless, which is quite useless as long as you have to run all the other rear speaker wires through the room. The system is also susceptible to interfere with cordless phones, 802.11b/g networking equipment, and even microwave ovens.

Sony's DAV-FR10W wireless surround speakers use infrared technology and sound as good as their wired counterparts. The system is a little pricey (around $1,000) but it's well worth it, as long as the DAV-FR10W receives an 8 point rating on C|Net (that counts as "very good").

Philips LX-3750W sells for a list price of $500. Again, the wireless feature proves to be a drawback, especially when you have to plug both rear boxes into AC outlets, instead of only one.

The overall performances of the Samsung HT-DB390 are not as good as those of its forerunners, but we might add that price is better (under $400) and it does save some space.

As a conclusion, the main problem with all these partially de-wired systems is that even when using them, you still have to employ lots of wires. Perhaps in the near future we'll see some improvement in this area.