Pioneer’s booth has a great demonstration room showing off their latest and greatest gear. This includes their new signature series plasmas that boast the sensational Kuro black levels but are only about 2” deep. Everyone was blown away by the high contrast display. Now if I could only get one in 120” to replace my front projection setup.
Pioneer debuted their new flagship Blu-ray player, the BDP-09FD. This new from the ground up design is built like a tank and features an impressive analog audio section featuring the latest Wolfenson DACs. Pioneer Elite is looking at this as a best in class solution that allows customers to toss out those standalone CD and DVD players sitting on their racks.
Planar demonstrated its current PD 8150 DLP projector on a huge, acoustically transparent screen (about 10-feet wide), and the image was plenty bright. The demo material was also some of the best and most diversified seen at the show (from Con Air, Pixar Shorts ("One Man Band"), and A Night at the Museum). The manufacturers shown contributed equipment to the system.
Canadian audiophile speaker manufacturer Totem has a new in-wall and in-ceiling line called Totem Tribe. The ceiling mounted speaker caught my eye, as its angled woofer-tweeter-woofer array nicely aims at the listening area while three dual-stage passive radiators help extend bass performance down to 57 Hz. The sound of the single playing unit was remarkably alluring.
Matthew Polk wanted to design the kind of outdoor speakers he would like to use in his own house. One of the more inspired things he came up with is the Atrium Sat30 ($150/each), a teardrop-shaped speaker that can dangle from the eaves or sit on the ground. If rain gets in, I was told, it evaporates.
UltraLink has a solution for those long HDMI cable connections with this powered HDMI cable. It's equipped with an in-line transmitter at the source end and a receiver at the reception end. $1000 for a 100-foot run.
Feeding the self-powered ML trio above, an Oppo 983 DVD player ($400 at Amazon) with multi-channel analog outputs. The SACD and DVD-Audio playing, DVD-Video upconverting (to 1080p) Oppo offers discrete level control, so you won't need a pre/pro if movies and music is all you do.
Pro-Ject's Design Box Series includes an iPod dock, USB phono preamp, stereo amp, mono amp, tube amp, etc. And if you buy four of them, you can keep them in this attractive box, which also comes in red and other colors. And if you flip the box over, you'll find a cutout that accommodates the iPod dock, were that one of your choices.
Norwegian manufacturer projectiondesign has announced a new line of projectors under the avielo moniker. Based on Philips' VIDI lamp technology, which increases brightness and contrast by producing alternating bright and dark pulses in the lamp, the avielo line launches with five models ranging in price from $7500 for the 720p Prisma to $65,000 or $70,000 for the dual-lamp 1080p Helios pictured here. All are shipping now except the Helios, which should appear by the end of the year.
A new line of speakers from well respected PSB has just hit with some of the most beautiful finishes I've ever seen in an affordable speaker. Unfortunately, my pictures don't do them any justice, so you'll just have to use your, well, you know.
PSB's Paul Barton shows off his new Imagine line to showgoers. With trickle-down technology from the bleeding-edge Synchrony line, it's a great-sounding family of speakers, as I discovered at a recent demo in New York. Put it on your short list of must-hears.
Entertainment Experience is a new startup that is looking to start a new format war. The service is said to bring a more premium movie experience than the Blu-ray format for people using larger screen sizes. Studio support wasn’t specified but they claim to be in negotiations for 4,500 titles at launch in January.
M&K, one of the long time leaders in loudspeakers and specifically professional grade monitors, is back. Their booth was pretty Spartan but they had a nice line-up of old favorites on display.
CEDIA 2008
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