FRED MANTEGHIAN BLOG

Shane: "It's starting to smell like a fish market during a longshoreman strike."

Fred: "What is?"

Shane: "Your Blog's, what!"

I have to admit, this is the longest I've gone without writing about something. Not that there isn't plenty to write about.

Like Christmas shopping. I'm doing a lot of it online. So far I've purchased a – hey, wait a minute, the kids read the blog. At least they tell me they do. If I give away too many details on the proceedings planned for the 25th day of the 12th month, they might get suspicious about the whole Santa thing.

Hmmmm.

I like to do my Christmas shopping, and I do mean mine, after the holidays. Three years ago, I bought my plasma in the relative calm of late winter. Five years before that, my Dwin CRT projector had the honor. The Dwin is getting long in the tooth while digital projectors can stay bright with the screw of an overpriced light bulb. The 50" plasma is just my backup.

So, I'm spoiled. What did you expect?

This year, I'm salivating over, nope, not DLP. Love it but, that rainbow thing. I'm not a Munchkin. And a three chip DLP is just too much money for guy who drinks cheap Pinot Noir.

Liquid Crystal on Silicon, or LCoS for short, is a three chip technology that I can really get behind. One of the beautiful things about LCoS, verses LCD, is contrast ratio. And as much as Shane thinks CRTs are the grande dame of video displays, he privately berates me for still owning one.

Shane: "Hey, I can get you a good deal on an Epson DLP projector. It was used to give Powerpoint presentations to a little old lady from Pasadena, and only on Sundays. It's not HD, but you won't be able to tell the difference."

Ah, the stigma.

I'm debating two projectors, well, maybe three. If it's three, two of them are from Sony. The Ruby and the Pearl. Sounds like a book Shane would read.

The other is from JVC. It is the newly minted, available in February, $6,299 DLA-HD1. I heard about it in Denver in September, but I didn't get to see it until October, in Japan. Sitting next to a Sony Ruby, the JVC beat the Sony hands down. But who can tell from these things. I guess I'll have to be nice to Shane, or Tom, or whoever gets the JVC to review, to find out if the JVC is the giant killer I think it might be.

Then there's the small Sony. The Sony Pearl is cheaper to operate, costs half as much as the Ruby (and even less than the JVC) but does so much right. Shane called it "creamy." That's smooth.

Of course Peter thinks the Mitsubishi LCD projector, the sub-$4,000 HC5000 is a winner. But being so close to the reduced pixel structure of an LCoS engine and not going for it? That's just not me.

Shane: "I can probably get you a sweet deal on one of those 1st gen HD-DVD players."

Fred: "You just picked up a 2nd generation Toshiba, didn't you? You're not trying to offload your old gear on me are you?"

Pause.

Shane: "Maybe."

Fred: "No thanks, I'm saving up for a projector anyway. Maybe you could regift the Toshiba to someone else, at that place you used to work."