Silicon Optix was demonstrating the 1080p HD beta version of its renowned HQV Benchmark disc with deintlacing, scaling and other various torture tests for displays. On top of that, select memebers of the press, including yours truly were given copies that we can run the tests on our HD DVD players and displays upon returning home.

TAD (division of Pioneer Electronics) is showing the Reference One, their latest ultra high-end loudspeakers. At $60,000/pr they’re certainly not for every home theater, but the sound was outstanding (warm, powerful, and detailed) and the cosmetics superb. Sound source here was open reel tape. Both the midrange cone and tweeter dome (made into a concentric driver) are made of beryllium. This one driver covers the entire range from 250 Hz to a staggering 100K Hz.

PS Audio is showing a new version of their Power Plant. The Premier is smaller and runs cooler than its predecessor yet puts out 50% more power (1500 watts continuous). At $2195, it’s not a budget power conditioner, but it’s really in a league of its own. The Premier is actually a power amplifier capable of outputting pure, distortionless (and thus noiseless) 120 volt sine wave AC sufficient to power most entire home theater systems. A case could be made that no combination of conditioners, power line filters and expensive power cords could ever match this at any cost. Included is filtration and surge protection for cable and telephone plus 10 AC outlets.

Following LG Electronics’ release of the Super Multi Blue Blu-ray/HD DVD combi player come rumblings among members of the press that the player might not be a full HD DVD player. Scuttlebut has it that the player will not be compatible with HD DVD’s HDi interactivity layer, which is the logic layer that supports the cutting edge interactivity features that run in full motion with HD video.

In addition to a wealth of impressive title announcements, the Blu-ray association adopted the sternest language I’ve yet heard in offering some very compelling sales numbers and statistics to state its case that Blu-ray will be the decisive winner of the format war. According to the BDA’s stats, the war is already over in Japan with Blu-ray scoring 96% of the high-definition player market there.

I was going to give you the specs for Toshiba's new HD-XA2, but why don't I just show them to you? Notice that while the player supports Dolby TrueHD, it only supports the core track of DTS HD Master Audio. That is, the player will not decode DTS HD Master Audio to full resolution multichannel PCM for transmission to your audio system via HDMI as digital PCM (or convert it to analog for extraction from the player's analog outs in full resolution). Instead it will play back such a track as standard DTS. Presumably it will transmit DTS HD Master Audio in its native form through the HDMI 1.3 link, but we still will need AV receivers or pre-pros that will accept and decode that form of signal from an HDMI 1.3 connection. As yet, none will do so, but we expect to see them within the next year.

Those small OLED displays that impressed everyone who saw them in the Sony booth (see the above), shown here in a side view, weren't much thicker than a piece of cardboard!