Featured Speaker Stands & Display Mount Reviews

The Omnimount DESK65 Lift Desk caught my eye at CEDIA. Now, I know it looks just like a regular desk, but when you press the lever it lifts vertically. In fact it has a full 20" of vertical lift... the entire desk. The Omnimount DESK65 can support up to 65 pounds. You can put a computer on it and stay productive. You now those times when you're sitting down and drifting off to sleep but you really need to get more done… That's when a desk that lifts for standing is an excellent idea. It can make you productive and energetic and help you keep working. It's available in Birch or Cherry and will be available later this year for $700. If you didn't know this already, I'm not just the anchor of these videos, I'm also the editor and in fact I spend way too much time at a desk - I'd rather be out exploring.

Will the Auralex SubDude-HT reduce all vibrations? No. And don't think you can place one under your sub and not have to worry about your neighbors. But it will stop the transmission of vibrations through the connection of the sub to the floor. While pricing hasn't been announced, we expect it to be in the same $60 range as the original Auralex SubDudes. Many home theater enthusiasts swear by their SubDudes. With the Auralex SubDude-HTs larger platform (17x22 inches) and lower profile (1.75 inches tall), there is little reason not to invest in one. For the potential gains, the cost is slight.

For any of you who watch our video reviews, you may have noticed a TV in the background. That's been made possible by Omnimount. Well, we decided to stop by their booth at the 2012 CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis and see what they were up to. It turns out they have a lot of great products this year - ways to mount your TV, ways to mount your iPad… but one of the more impressive products we saw was the new Lift40 Mount. It handles TVs between 30" and 55" - basically anything up to 40 pounds in weight. It's got a really low profile and fits flat against the wall. In fact, this is the very mount that Omnimount showed us last year in their upstairs demo area, but swore us to secrecy since it was still in development.

We're always on some crusade to get our friends to wall-mount their flat-panel televisions. But we often wondered about the newer 80" screens... how on earth do you mount those? The answer: carefully. But aside from that, you need a mount that can handle the weight. And then, if you want maneuverability of the display, you need something that doesn't really exist - or at least it didn't exist until this week. Premier Mounts debuted an addition to its family of articulating flat-panel mounts specifically geared towards displays over 65" in size: the AM500 Mega Mount - a mount capable of supporting displays up to 500 pounds (226.8 kg). If Superman were a display mount, he'd be this one.

The new Atdec Levitate L-PB and L-PW mount is a departure from what we're used to. It's attractive, yet functional. It's flexible, but sturdy - it's made of aluminum and stainless steel and can hold a display weighing nearly 20 pounds. That's a 27" display or more. Most mounts top out at 10 pounds, or a 24" display. On top of that, the Levitate lets you move the monitor around with ease, tilt it throughout a 110 degree range, and even rotate it to portrait view when needed. Also, instead of half-baked cable management schemes, this one actually works. You can route your display cable through the outer part of the arm, securing it with the provided clips. Once everything is in place, you cover the arm with the black or white color-accented covers and your Levitate is still free to bend and move in any direction while cleaning up your workspace.

One of the things we haven't really talked about is the OmniMount Pro CF Cart. This is The name is kinda weird, but it stands for Professional Constant Force Cart, OmniMount's new design for mounting a TV that can be moved around from room to room. The Pro CF Cart features 20" of vertical adjustment that literally takes just a touch. There are no knobs or levers - everything just... works. You can also rotate your display between portrait or landscape at-will by releasing the rear lock and twisting the mount 90 degrees. The cart is super-easy to roll thanks to oversized wheels that lock and we found it to do well over channel drops and cable covers and other small obstacles.

Atdec is really coming into its own as a premier mounting solutions company. They are making some really elegant systems, and their product line has expanded in recent years to include both typical and atypical mounts and stands. In particular, we've been impressed by their flat panel TV mounts that take into account the new thinner televisions as well as the attention they pay in other products to cable management and positioning requirements. The Atdec TH-3060-LPT is actually one of their "stealth technology" models. It looks like a simple solution, but it offers some pretty impressive features that are part handy, part brilliant.

I'm a bit obsessive about which projector mounts I like to use and install. It has to be universal. It has to be rugged. It has to cost less than the projector... These are important criteria and together they set the bar high for anybody manufacturing a one-size-fits-all projector mounting solution. But in addition to universality, a projector mount has to be easy to install, easy to adjust, and preferably, capable of supporting that super-size heavy projector you may or may not one day be able to afford. Premier Mounts' newest SpiroLock Low Profile Projector Mount addresses all three of my "gotta-have" criteria pretty well. In fact, they bulls-eye two of them and get pretty close on the third. At $178 it may not seem sane in the pricing arena, but it's a robust mount, and you can find it a lot cheaper than MSRP from dealers and authorized retailers.

OmniMount's John Deutch demoed the new full-motion ActionMount Play40 mount and was able to literally manhandle a 60-inch TV into a variety of positions with near-effortless ease. This is a great way to introduce a new product, and OmniMountfloored us with their interactive TV wall mount based on Ergotron's Constant Force Technology. Constant Force Technology is pretty cool - if not a bit mysterious. Within the mount are a combination of a spring, cam assembly, and even a pulley. Put it all together and you get the OmniMount ActionMount PLAY40, which makes it possible for the display to be positioned exactly where you want it... and you get to move it around without needing a second person or having to loosen up anything.