Audio Video News

Although the show floor of the CEDIA EXPO 2005 hasn't officially opened yet, there are already hundreds of installers taking advantage of numerous educational classes offered by CEDIA and sponsoring manufacturers. New and old installers alike can learn about anything from remote control programming to acoustical engineering and video calibration. Of course, education is for the men and women who do the real work of installation. Those of us with the cushier jobs - the press - get to eat shrimp and drink free cocktails…

But those free cocktails come with a price (yet one more proof that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch). Before we imbibe and ingest, those of us silly enough to show up on time are forced to suffer through what is generously called a "press conference" but would more aptly be referred to as a humongous waste of time.

Fortunately, every now and then, there's a nugget of gold to be mined from these mostly mindless events. Here are a couple of the nuggets from today.

SIM2 USA displayed their latest front projector, the C3X, for all to marvel over its sexy, rounded exterior design. The picture it throws on the screen, they assured us, looks even better than the chassis. The new 3-chip DLP projector is part of a three-model C3X lineup (including the C3X Lite and C3X LINK) that will begin shipping this month with prices starting at $15,995. The SIM2 guys also went to great lengths to explain that they design and engineer almost every piece of gear at the parent company's facility in Italy - and proudly boasted they know as much about what it takes to build a projector as anyone in the business.

Always eager to please the press with a new tidbit of information, Sony revealed a new simplified LocationFree TV, the 12-inch LF-X11, which offers extended wireless range of over 100 feet, along with the LF-PK1 LocationFree PlayerPak. Both new systems incorporate MPEG4 compression.

Also unveiled were the newest models in Sony's BRAVIA (Best Resolution Audio Visual Integrated Architecture) LCD TV line: the BRAVIA KDL-V40XBR1, KDL-V32XBR1 and KDL-V26XBR1 HDTVs (shipping later this month for about $3,500, $2,700 and $2,000, respectively). These latest XBR models feature Sony's advanced Wide Color Gamut-Cold Cathode Florescent Light (WCG-CCFL) backlighting system, which is said to produce purer white light for a wider and more accurate range of colors.

The most exciting part of the Sony press soiree, however, was the glimpse we were given of Sony's new 1920 x 1080p high-definition SXRD front projector that Sony says has a contrast ratio of up to 15,000:1. The VPL-VW100 uses technology trickled down from the QUALIA 004 SXRD projector and is built around a 400-watt Pure Xenon lamp. Sony says the lamp "approximates sun light and can reproduce colors closest to the natural spectrum including the red bandwidth."

Tomorrow the installers and system designers will converge en masse on the show floor, and throngs of press people will go to more press conferences. (Some might even sneak a peak at the EXPO itself, which is the real reason why we're here…)