(FORTUNE Magazine) – HOME THEATER The hit of this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (where all the products on this page were featured) was the combination of giant television (screens from 27 inches to 120 inches) and super sound system that marketers call ''home theater.'' Mitsubishi and NEC introduced the biggest boys: Mitsubishi's monster monitor, due out by spring, costs $20,000 and is six feet high and eight feet wide. The smaller, 70-inch Mitsubishi TV above costs $6,399. But throw in an audio-video receiver, hi-fi VCR, cassette deck, laser disc player, turntable, surround-sound speakers, and popcorn -- and the pricetag swells by $5,000 to $6,000. The most likely buyers: those ''cocooning'' baby-boomers and other consumers who appreciate high-quality TV images.

ID LOGIC You're driving through the Sunbelt and need to soothe your senses with Chopin or Ella Fitzgerald. Let's see, which stations play classical music in Houston? Jazz in Phoenix? Ask your car radio. Technics' new ID Logic automotive receiver stores on a chip the call letters and programming formats for more than 9,300 AM and FM stations. Listeners punch in their preference -- classical, country and western, easy listening, jazz, rock, or talk -- and ID Logic locks in the area's six most powerful stations in the favored category. Every 60 miles or so, drivers can push a directional button so the radio can select new stations. ID Logic contains program information on 5,100 cities with populations over 10,000. If a local station changes from country to pop, owners can reprogram the radio. Matsushita Electric Industrial, makers of the Technics brand, licensed the concept from PRS Corp., a small New York City software company that compiles the data. PRS is trying to sell the idea to other electronics manufacturers. Technics hopes the radio, priced at $799 and due in May, will appeal to car rental companies, truckers, and other roadies.

MEMBER ALERT SYSTEM Your elderly father, stricken with Alzheimer's disease, becomes disoriented and wanders out of the house. Suddenly an alarm goes off, and you're able to stop him -- as long as dad is wearing a personal link transmitter (PLT), a one-ounce device that locks on the patient like a wristwatch or ankle bracelet. Up to now, devices like this have been confined to hospitals and nursing homes. Every 12 seconds the PLT sends a silent digital radio signal to a terminal attached to the telephone. An alarm is activated when the person wearing the PLT walks out of a specified area. At that point another resident of the household has five minutes to find pop and shut off the alarm. After five minutes the terminal automatically calls the Member Alert system, which provides a 24-hour emergency response center. With info such as neighbors' and doctors' telephone numbers as well as the patient's medical history, Member Alert can summon help. Member Alert, a unit of Total Alert Corp. of Nepean, Ontario, expects its service -- $600 for the equipment and six months' coverage -- will be available by summer, assuming the FCC okays it.

MAESTRO Heavy breathers, beware. Northern Telecom's $136 Maestro is the first residential telephone with ''caller identification'' features. When the phone rings, the number called from is displayed on a built-in screen -- in most cases even if it is unlisted. Up to now customers wanting to know who's calling had to buy an attachment from the phone company. Says Ian Craig, a marketing vice president at Northern Telecom: ''Think of a telephone as a door. Maestro gives us a door with a peephole.'' Still, civil rights groups complain that the service intrudes on privacy and dialers determined to remain anonymous can counter caller ID by signing up for call blocking in some areas. Northern Telecom will market Maestro through the regional and independent phone companies.