In the February issue, the Samsung HL-S6188W was derided, and rightly so, for it’s staggering light output of almost 170 ft-Lamberts. For a 61-inch display, this is way to bright to watch in a dark room. It’s the kind of light output that hurts, literally.
Everyone wants a matched system, so how about some speakers to match your plasma? That’s right, plasma speakers. These puppies will really wow the neighbors. They’re not common, and the seller buries the most important sentence in the middle of the posting “Measurable amounts of O2 (ozone) are produced during operation.” Let’s not nitpick that ozone is actually O3. The next sentence is even better “Some people claim they are sensitive to this in the room, others find it fresh smelling or don’t notice it!” Yeah, until it kills you. Leave a door open, turn out the lights, and marvel at the pretty tweeters that make sound with "light."
Get 'em while they're hot (literally).
As I’ve talked about before, console games have to be written for a specific resolution (unlike computer games). Nearly every Xbox 360 game, for example, is 720p. The console then converts that up or down depending on how you set up the console. Those with older TVs drop it to 480i, those with HD sets can choose 720p or 1080i (and occasionally 1080p).
At midnight last night, the very first PlayStation 3s were sold. To herald the even, there were huge launch parties in New York and San Francisco. A few of us journalist types were brought up to check it all out.
The people at Microsoft are complete idiots. No, that’s not exactly true. They’re charlatans. They are purposely misleading the public. They recently announced a software upgrade will be available soon that will allow the Xbox 360 to output 1080p.
Here’s a nicely blurry side view of JVC’s thin RPTV. This is headed for our shores, though at the moment there’s no price or even a model number. It’s about 10-inches thick.
Hitachi has a line of products in Japan called WOOO. You read that right. The WOOO line of DVD Recorders with hard drives is about a stylish product I’ve seen. It looks like a BMW M1. The shot here is the version with a Blu-ray drive. I doubt we’ll see either here.
As rumored, Toshiba/Canon showed off three 55-inch SED displays, proving without a doubt that they can make at least three SED panels. They looked as impressive as the oft-seen 37-inch, with a mix of pre-recorded (and motion filled) colorful images, and even a live action scene (with a camera on a person and puppet that was in sight of the audience). Here’s the bad news: They’re now saying the end of 2007, but with no definite pricing or quantity.
The most surprising demo at the show was a demo of a next generation Pioneer plasma that stole quite a bit of SED’s thunder. It had legitimate blacks (seemingly as good as SED). They’re claiming a 20,000:1 contrast ratio, and from the demo it sure looked like it could be close to that. I’d love to tell you more, but the entire presentation was in Japanese. I’ll put up some photos later of the Powerpoint, and you can try to translate them. At the earliest, it may be a model for next year. I’m sure we’ll hear more at CES.
CEATEC is an interesting show. The portion that deals with the stuff we cover is rather small. The rest of the show tends to be manufacturers that make the parts of the stuff we cover. I’ll take some pictures of those bits tomorrow.
Like I mentioned in my CEDIA report, JVC has a new front projector. It will be around $7000. In demo here at the show, they showed it beside their old $30,000 projector. No contest. It wasn’t even close. The $7k projector blew the old model away. Better blacks, better contrast ratio, better color, better detail. That’s twice I’ve seen this projector look good, and I can’t wait to get a hold of one (they’re saying early next year).
In case you missed it, here's the link to all our CEDIA coverage. Next week, I'll be at CEATEC, and I'll hopfully have some cool things to blog about while I'm at that show.
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