CES 2009

Blame Sony's Chief Boss Howard Stringer for commenting that OLED sounds like a Norse god. But it's not. It's an ultra flat display technology with an inherently outstanding black level. Last year, Sony showed a number of small 11-inch models, together with a slightly larger prototype. The display was essentially the same this year, except that the design has been refined and the 11-incher is actually on sale now for $2500. OLED is currently expensive to manufacturer in larger screen sizes, and reportedly has a shorter life than LCD and plasma displays. But the pictures on these small screens sure looked fantastic.

Sony also showed their usual flood of new products, many of which aren't exactly applicable to home theater. Perhaps most interesting, at opposite ends of the spectrum, were the Rolly, an MP3 player that literally dances to its own tune (it moves in response to the music it is playing back!) and a prototype 82-inch 4000x2000 (4K) LCD display that can show either a full 4K image or four 1920x1080 images at the same time. No word, however, on whether or not it will ever be a real product or is just a "show car."