Most of Hitachi's current line was announced last spring and is already in the shops. But two new developments will find their way into new models this year. A new blinking backlight system, which will show up first in 37- and 32-inch models, is said to significantly clean up motion blur.

The second is a 55-inch, true 1920x1080 plasma panel. Expect this one in late 06 or early 07. The photo here is a screen shot from this plasma. Keep in mind that there are a lot of steps between screen and published photo in a screen shot, and it can provide only a rough idea of what is happening at a given moment. As good as it looks, the actual image looked way better.

Optoma was flooring everyone with one of the few operational prototypes of a 1080p, 1-chip DLP projector. The H81, which is expected to sell for $10,000 when it hits the shops this summer, threw a superb image sourced from 720p movie trailers stored on a Mac computer's hard drive.

In another room, Optoma also showed its new H72, at $4000 1280x720 DLP (and expected to street at near $2000). The trailer from King Kong looked particularly impressive. Though a close look revealed the projector's limitations compared to the H81, they weren't at all bothersome, particularly at the price.—TJN