LATEST ADDITIONS

Mitsubishi formally announced a new 1920x1080 LCD projector at CEDIA,the HC5000U, equipped with an auto iris, lens shift, and a price of $4495. The video processor is the new REON chip from Silicon Optix, lamp life is claimed to be 5000 hours, and fan noise is specified at 19dBA (a very low figure) in low lamp mode.

Marantz introduced its third new DLP projector this year, at a new (for them) lower price point. Details in the next blog entry, below.

TI featured SIM2's new 3-chip 1080p projector at their booth. While it looked great for the most part, it was hard to get a handle on just how good it really is since three of the four demo clips relied heavily or entirely on computer animation, and the fourth was a grainy, oversharpened trailer for a new upcoming <I>Rocky</I> (!) movie. Rocky 12, I think. An lovely but alarmingly enthusiastic presenter extolled the praises of TI's DLP technology until my teeth hurt. This must have been for the benefit of those in this professional CEDIA audience who may have never heard of DLP before.

How do you make an in-wall speaker look interesting? You don't, but Atlantic Technology was one of a handful of vendors to actually make them sound interesting (most vendors didn't even try to demo their in-walls). Three Atlantic IWCB-626's were mounted behind an acoustically transparent Screen Research screen, together with dipole surrounds and subs. The projector was a small Crystal View single chip DLP, which appeared to be a variation on a modestly-priced Mitsubishi design. Nothing fancy here, but simply a solid demo all around of a system that is not outrageously priced. Featured were some particularly fine HD trailers from the upcoming films <I>Flyboys</I> and <I>A Night At The Museum</I>.