Tom Norton
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CEDIA 2012
Tom Norton Sep 06, 2012 Published: Sep 06, 2012 0 comments
No price was announced for it today, but SIM2's Multimedia's Cinemaquattro must be that company's most pricey offering. Offering a full 4K resolution and a 3-chip DLP engine, it claims a brightness of up to 10,000 ANSI lumens from its 2kW Xenon lamp. As with all pro-derived projectors, its chassis is sold separately from its long list of available lenses. SIM2's PR maven, Lucette Nicoll, stands by to give you an idea of its size. It weighs 251 lbs.
CEDIA 2012
Tom Norton Sep 06, 2012 Published: Sep 06, 2012 0 comments
Stewart Filmscreen has long been known for top quality projection screens, available in a blistering variety of screen materials. But they aren't exactly Blue Light specials. To attract more consumers to the benefits of a projection setup, Stewart has introduced a line of screens more affordable than its other offerings. Called the CIMA line, these screens will all be 16 x 9, fixed frame, and available in a range of standard sizes. Two materials will be available: grey with a gain of 0.9 and White with a gain of 1.1.

For those who have the spare cash, Stewart also demonstrated the latest version of its Director's Choice screen, offering an almost infinite variety of aspect ratios, settable and selectable by motorized masking at the touch of a button. The 15-foot wide model shown retails at just short of $60,000.

CEDIA 2012
Tom Norton Sep 05, 2012 2 comments
Sony introduced three new AV receivers. The claim to fame of both the STR-5800ES (130 Watts per channel) and STR-2800ES (100 WPC) is that they may be directly integrated with the popular Control4 home automation system. They may also be used with a variety of other automation systems. The third model, the STR-DA1800, does not have Control4 built-in. All three offer 4K upconversion, full WiFi, Bluetooth, Airplay, and Internet access features.

CEDIA 2012
Tom Norton Sep 05, 2012 0 comments
Though outwardly similar to last year’s VPL-HW30ES, Sony’s new VPL-HW50ES (available in October) is an updated design. It incorporates the same Reality Creation processing as the company’s flagship VPL-VW1000 4K projector, scaled down here for 2K operation. There’s a new Iris 3 algorithm for the projector’s advanced dynamic iris, for a claimed dynamic contrast ratio of 100,000:1. The light output is also said to be increased by 30% to 1700 lumens. The 3D transmitter is internal, and the 240Hz panel is claimed to reduce 3D crosstalk. There’s also a 2D-to-3D conversion mode and a 244-zone panel alignment feature to insure convergence.

While at $4000 the VPL-HW50ES is more expensive than the HW30ES (which remains available at a reduced price of $3000), the new projector’s price includes 2 pair of active 3D glasses and a spare projection lamp.

CEDIA 2012
Tom Norton Sep 05, 2012 5 comments
Sony’s launched its new XBR-84X900 84-inch diagonal LED edge-lit LCD set at its CEDIA EXPO 2012 press conference. With a native 4K resolution (3840 x 2160), it can display native 4K material at 24Hz or 30Hz, or upscale 2K sources to 4K. With its passive 3D glasses, it can also produce a full 2K 3D resolution to each eye (passive glasses in a 2K 3D set reduce the resolution of a 1920 x 1080 source to 1920 x 540). The set looked spectacular and will be available at selected Sony stores in November for $25,000.

Sony also announced two new flagship XBR-HX950 LCD flat panels: 55-inches ($4500) and 65-inches ($5500). The sets offer full LED backlighting with local dimming and are available now.

CES 2012
Tom Norton Jan 15, 2012 2 comments
I remember CESs of long ago—that's about five to ten years, an eternity in CES time— when all of the literature handed out was in print form. Now it's typically on a flash drive, a disc (and even they are getting thinner on the ground—particularly the tiny ones that can't be used on Mac computers) or a simple card with directions to a news-release website. But not always; there's still a pile of paper to deal with, like the 6-inch stack I brought home with me. Luckily I drive to the show.

One of the realities of blogging at CES is that we here at Home Theater cover the video news first, which means that most of the video-related entries end up at the bottom of the blog pile, with the later, heavily audio-related entries at the top. That's why the blogs here are front-loaded with audio. Much of the serious high-end audio is at the Venetian Hotel, well removed from the of the circus atmosphere at the Las Vegas Convention Center where just about everything else, including the video, resides.

You may see a lot of audio entries below and wonder why? Well, for my part, I can't escape my roots of a dozen years or more writing the Stereophile. But more importantly for our present purposes, speakers are speakers, and I spent most of my time at the Venetian scoping them out. While many speakers that you'll see here will be inappropriate for home theater, largely because their manufacturers don't see fit to make matching center channel speakers for them, the technology involved is still fascinating. To me, anyway.

CES 2012
Tom Norton Jan 15, 2012 0 comments
This is the SEAS driver referenced in the posting above.
CES 2012
Tom Norton Jan 15, 2012 0 comments
There are specialty manufacturers that make various parts for loudspeaker drivers, and when ordering specialty drivers it is possible for a manufacturer of finished speakers to select the cone, surround, frame, voice-coil, etc. from various sources and have these parts assembled by a finished driver specialist. That's way it's possible to experiment with different configurations without the expense of fabricating the individual (very expensive) parts only to discard them if the results prove unsatisfactory.

That may or may not be how Wilson or any other specific manufacturer orders its custom drivers, only that it's possible. Note how the midrange driver used in the Sasha from Wilson Audio (and in variations in most of that company's newer speakers) at first glance resembles the driver from SEAS shown below. However, if you look closely the resemblance is mainly in the cone material, with significant differences in the dust cap, frame, surround, and presumably the internal structure as well.

CES 2012
Tom Norton Jan 15, 2012 0 comments
GoldenEar uses these custom drivers in many of its speaker designs, including the air-motion tweeter.
CES 2012
Tom Norton Jan 15, 2012 0 comments
Here are the beryllium cone drivers seen in the new, $50,000/pair 8T speakers from Status Acoustics and described elsewhere here.
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