Sharp revealed a 108-inch LCD panel. It was 1080p of course, and while no price was mentioned, you can bet on it costing more than a little. It should be available this summer.
Sony was showing a gaggle of 11" (diagonal) OLED displays, along with a 27" model. OLEDs, or Organic Light Emitting Diodes, were once thought to be the next big thing in flat panels. They are not only thin, but have great contrast. The light comes from the diodes themselves, and may be modulated or even shut off, similar to the way in which the venerable CRT provides its stunning contrast. The 27" model here is a full 1920x1080 resolution, while the 11" models are 1024x600.
Those small OLED displays that impressed everyone who saw them in the Sony booth (see the above), shown here in a side view, weren't much thicker than a piece of cardboard!
Like many manufacturers, Toshiba is now emphasizing flat panel displays. These two RPTV DLPs were seen, lonesome and hungry, in one corner of Toshiba's booth.
At the end of January Epson will release the PowerLite Pro Cinema 1080, a 3 LCD 1080p projector that has horizontal and vertical lens shift for only $4999. Not enough of a bargain for you? It will also come with a spare lamp and a ceiling mount.
I was going to give you the specs for Toshiba's new HD-XA2, but why don't I just show them to you? Notice that while the player supports Dolby TrueHD, it only supports the core track of DTS HD Master Audio. That is, the player will not decode DTS HD Master Audio to full resolution multichannel PCM for transmission to your audio system via HDMI as digital PCM (or convert it to analog for extraction from the player's analog outs in full resolution). Instead it will play back such a track as standard DTS. Presumably it will transmit DTS HD Master Audio in its native form through the HDMI 1.3 link, but we still will need AV receivers or pre-pros that will accept and decode that form of signal from an HDMI 1.3 connection. As yet, none will do so, but we expect to see them within the next year.
Shane Buettner | Jan 08, 2007 | First Published: Jan 09, 2007
Sony announced that James Bond will make his high-definition debut on March 13 when <I>Casino Royale</I> lands on Blu-ray Disc. The disc will be Sony's first to be encoded with MPEG-4/AVC compression and yet will be a dual-layer 50GB BD.
Shane Buettner | Jan 08, 2007 | First Published: Jan 09, 2007
In addition to a wealth of impressive title announcements, the Blu-ray association adopted the sternest language I’ve yet heard in offering some very compelling sales numbers and statistics to state its case that Blu-ray will be the decisive winner of the format war. According to the BDA’s stats, the war is already over in Japan with Blu-ray scoring 96% of the high-definition player market there.