Home-Theater Speakers That Double as Furniture

I'm not much of a handyman or home décor person—my current home theater setup is a tangle of speakers, boxes, wires, and components stacked one on top of the other. It's not pretty, but I don't really care. That said, most people, or at least their significant others, don't like the look of home theater equipment (not surprising, since most speakers have the same generic grey or black boxy design).

But here's a set of speakers that don't even remotely look like speakers, at least after you cover them.  Shown this week at the CES Preview (where they won an Innovations award), the Acoustic Research Home Décor HD510 is a 5.1 set-up with speaker covers that look like common pieces of furniture.

Built out of everything from rope and wicker to wood and poly resin, these decorative "antique clocks," "baskets," "vases," "books," and "sconces" look like the real thing, but are actually hollowed out covers that you just place over you're the otherwise generic AR HD510 5.1 speakers and subwoofer. (The subwoofer is covered with a big "trunk.") Each cover has a hidden grill through which sound emits, but otherwise these pieces of pseudo-furniture-and-bric-a-brac look like the real thing.

Would you put these in your living room? Do you love/hate the look of speakers in your home?

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