CEDIA 2009

At the end of the day, I stopped by the Digital Projection booth to see its new offerings, which I blogged about before the show. The M-Vision Cine LED was being compared with an iVision 30 lamp-based projector on adjacent screens, and while the iVision was brighter, even on a larger screen, the Cine LED exhibited better color saturation. In another part of the booth, the HighLite 3-chip DLP looked great, with excellent color and detail.

This surround preamp/processor from Rotel is so new, it isn't even in the company's CEDIA press kit. Shown here in a rack below a Rotel tuner, the RSP-1580 sports a large LCD display and incorporates dual audio DSP chips with a combined processing speed of 3000 MIPS as well as the latest Genesis video processor that uses 12 bits per color. It can decode all the current audio formats, and a front-panel USB port lets you connect an iPod. Perhaps most interesting is its integrated HDMI matrix switcher with four inputs and four outputs, allowing you to send the signal from any input to any output. The RSP-1580 will list for $4500 when it ships in January.

Yet another entry in the LED-illuminated, single-chip DLP projector sweepstakes is the Mico 50 from SIM2. Said to deliver 800 lumens, the PhlatLight LEDs have an expected lifespan of over 30,000 hours. It's name means "sparkle" in Italian, but I saw no sparkles in the demo on a Da-Lite Affinity screen, which is a good thing. Not so good was the demo material—a clip from a concert video featuring singer Seal. The colored stage lighting was not conducive to evaluating color accuracy, though Seal's dark skin looked about right when he was in white light. The Mico 50 should be available in November for $25,000.