Polk Audio has released in-wall speakers with an IP address in your household network.  You can connect these speakers to an Ethernet cable and they can receive audio signals from any network or internet source.  The speakers are self amplified using the new lightweight and tiny digital amps at 100 Watts per speaker.  Hook these speakers to a network and they bypass the need for any other component, no need for amps, receiver or any other source provided you have access to lots of music on your ‘puters, and with your CD collection ripped to MP3s and all the free internet radio stations out there you can access through winamp it’s not really a great feat, even if you just hook it to one computer. 

So, are these home entertainment speakers or PC speakers?  Polk Audio says both.  You can hook these up to an analog source as well and just use them for your home stereo kit.  The speakers themselves are made with polypropylene cones and match up with all of Polk’s LSi Series.

Of course I’m skeptical of how they sound.  Polk can make some decent speakers so I’m sure they sound fine, it’s a highly specialized niche that would feel they’d need speakers like this.  I guess if you had a need for any in-wall speakers these wouldn’t hurt, it’s just another option for giving them sound sources.  In fact it might be kind of cool to place these through your house if money were no object and you could control music in every room from one server… hmmm… yeah, that’s a great idea.  I probably wouldn’t use them for an existing home theater system or for dedicated PC speakers, it’s a bit of an overkill.