Since just about the time the television was invented, people have been trying to find ways to make their TV sets go away. For a long time, disguising them was the answer: Remember those "Mediterranean style" TV consoles in the Sears catalog? Then, finally, salvation arrived in the form of the plasma TV. The design—sleek, sexy, and capable of hanging on the wall like a picture frame—had home decorators and spouses everywhere rejoicing.

The problem, however, is that at about the time we started getting those plasma sets, folks started demanding more-elaborate sound systems for use with them. So, just when we found a way to replace that big ugly box on the floor with a sleek modern panel on the wall, we quickly filled the floor space with a half-dozen new ugly boxes—the speakers we needed for our new surround-sound systems. Spouses and home decorators were up in arms, and the gauntlet was thrown down for speaker designers to come up with designs that could complement those oh-so-sleek plasmas.

At first, many people turned to in-wall speakers, and they remain an excellent way to go if you’re equipped to accommodate them. Good-quality in-wall speakers have been around since the 1980s, and when skillfully installed, they can practically disappear. But you need to own the home or condo, be willing to hack big holes in the walls, and have luck on your side (i.e., all of the wall studs positioned in such a way that the speakers just end up exactly where you need them). Other people turned to the small, sleek, inexpensive speaker designs that are found in home-theater-in-a-box systems. While this may look fine, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of performance. Clearly a more widely acceptable solution was needed, so many speaker designers turned their talents toward creating sleek, high-quality surface-mounted speakers that would go well with a plasma TV.

We looked into what some of the top speaker manufacturers have developed to meet this need, searching specifically for slim high-tech wall-mounting designs that would match the style of a plasma screen. The following is a sampling of what we found.