I was strolling through Costco the other day, looking to buy 55 gallons of something I don't need but can't resist at the price, when I saw this flier attached to all the store's HDTVs (forgive on the photo quality- I was shopping and had to use my iPhone's camera).
The most recent projector I reviewed here at UAV was a real standout, Epson's Powerlite Pro Cinema 1080p. This projector is among the more marvelous packages of peformance and price I've seen. Especially susprising was that the color fidelity was so pristine and on this LCD projector, along with a relaxed and naturally detailed image with real depth. The only thing that held this proejctor back was slightly dim light output and softer image. The Pro Cinema 1080p UB is here to settle both scores.
The Pearl SXRD projector was not Sony’s only significant product introduction yesterday. Also shown to reporters and reviewers for the first time was the STR-DA5200ES AV receiver. This product shows that when Sony is big on something it shows up in all its products. That something here is 1080p.
My recent post on extended surround surprised me with the response it drew, both quantitatively and qualitatively. I think what surprised me the most was how many of you have already moved beyond 5.1. Myself and most of the writers for the magazine are still using 5.1 as a base system, and occasionally jury-rigging extended surround on an as-needed basis for testing. I can’t answer for all of them, but I did want to pass along more of my own thoughts and experiences on the subject and why I’m still using 5.1 and not at all likely to change that anytime soon.
Years ago, I experimented extensively with both 6.1- and 7.1-channel surround sound, both with a single surround back channel and with two surround back channels. I was then in a dual-purpose living room space, and the 6.1 with the single surround back channel was most effective, but not enough to totally sell me on the concept. My last two rooms have been dedicated media spaces, and each has been in the neighborhood of 25x16, with a first a 10’ ceiling and now just under 9’. The first house was new construction with a ground-up media room build. It was a big room, and I pre-wired the back wall for 7.1 as a precaution. It turned out I never felt I needed it and when I moved to my current house, a retrofit job, I didn’t give any consideration to 7.1, let alone height and width expansion. Let me speculate on why.
Extended surround sound is nothing new. The staple surround sound configuration for movie theaters and home theaters is digitally delivered, discrete 5.1-channel surround sound. But in both arenas there have also been numerous pushes to move beyond that paradigm. In the DVD era we were given a number of options for expanding our surround sound experience toward the back of the room, from the base 5.1-channel paradigm to 6.1- and 7.1-channels. Although only select DVD titles were encoded with extended surround, within a few years virtually every AV receiver and surround processor in existence offered tool sets that would decode these soundtracks- or any 5.1-channel soundtrack- to 6.1- or 7.1-channels on playback. And just about any AVR you look at today will include seven channels of amplification.
Be Careful Buying A Flat Panel On The Internet
Flat panels, and especially plasmas, are big, relatively heavy and very fragile. Internet sites often offer the best price, but be sure you know who you're dealing with and what their return policies are should your TV be defective, or if you just plain don't like it. A flat panel is a big, expensive item to ship. A local retailer might charge more, but offer invaluable service should you not be happy with your purchase or have a defective unit.
Audio Plus’s John Bevier totally brown-bagged me. He grinned unabashedly and led me to a darkened demo room. To see what? To hear what? Soon, I was watching a 2.35:1 image on a really big screen. Universal’s Wanted on Blu-ray, an absolute guilty pleasure, roared into its dynamically brutal train crash sequence. The sound was spacious, articulate, and punchy. You figured it out before I did, but the cute little Dome system pictured above, with speakers the size of grapefruits, is where all that sound was coming from. Walking among Focal’s impressive (and sometimes imposing) line of speakers had been a setup from the start. The Dome costs $2,500 for a 5.1 channel system, and in addition to the splashy colors, they can be mounted on stands, on wall, or plopped onto a piece of furniture. They can be swiveled any which way for optimal sound. This is a design solution that rocks!
Fox and MGM joined the Blu-ray studios in ramping up its support for the HD format in a major way. It announced that its major release titles will be day and date with DVD from now on, including movies currently in theaters like Night at the Museum and Eragon when they're released to home video later this year.
As many of you are undoubtedly aware, Fox recently jumped back into Blu-ray Disc, which is certainly welcome news. But as many are also aware, Fox' participation was apparently contingent on BD+, which to our knowledge is used for additional layers of copy restriction. Among other titles the day-and-date-with-DVD release of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Day After Tomorrow came out, which also feature some BD-J encoded interactivity features. And that's where the problems started for owners of standalone Blu-ray players.
Last, wireless HDMI is also coming from LG in a big way. At the press event the company didn’t elaborate on too many details, but did suggest it can pass signals as high in resolution as 1080p/60 “uncompressed.” I’m guessing in this context that means the wireless system itself doesn’t apply on the fly video compression to restrict bandwidth requirements while moving the HD signals around. No mention was made of the other side of this equation, which in the case of Blu-ray is bandwidth intensive lossless audio. I’ll visit LG on the showroom floor once the show opens and find out more. While single wires are great, no wires is even better- as long as it’s really the free lunch LG is claiming it to be!
Shane Buettner
My recent post on extended surround surprised me with the response it drew, both quantitatively and qualitatively. I think what surprised me the most was how many of you have already moved beyond 5.1. Myself and most of the writers for the magazine are still using 5.1 as a base system, and occasionally jury-rigging extended surround on an as-needed basis for testing. I can’t answer for all of them, but I did want to pass along more of my own thoughts and experiences on the subject and why I’m still using 5.1 and not at all likely to change that anytime soon.
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