Audio Video News

Thursday at CEDIA is press day. The floor isn't open, but the day is usually filled with activities. This year things thinned out with the cancellation of several events, notably Toshiba. I suspect HD-DVD was going to be Toshiba's featured attraction, but the word is out that this year's scheduled launch of HD-DVD has been put off until spring, where the battle will go toe-to-toe, or bit-to-bit, with Blu-ray.

The first press event of the day was for H-P. Knowing that the computer company, newly minted as a video display vendor as well, had a lot of new stuff to show, I rushed not to miss it. But H-P is not that HP. H-P is the company that manufacturers Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners. Vacuum cleaners at CEDIA? Yes, central vacuum systems are an extra marketing opportunity for custom installers. Now, I’m sure Dirt Devil makes very fine vacuums, but they're not exactly my beat. But having already helped myself to their pre-brief refreshments (a Coke and one of those nuclear detonation-sized chocolate-chip cookies baked by the ton for these events by giant elves), I felt like I owed them twenty minutes. It wasn't a complete waste; I did find out that a whole house vacuum system, with installation, will run about $1700 for a 2500 square-foot house and $2300 for the 5000 square-foot houses that make up much of the custom install market. Just thought you'd like to know.

Despite the shortage of press events today (which will be made up for in triplicate the next two days) things soon picked up. The Richard Gray Power Company announced the PowerBridge, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) designed specifically for home theater applications and said to respond within 1-millisedond of a power failure. Designed to be compatible with the company’s patented parallel, non-current limiting and dual-stage surge projection technology, it offers dual stage surge protection technology. This, it is argued, makes it "invisible" to the components connected to it. It also includes the functionality of the company's 600S power conditioner, with six Hubbell outlets. It is rated at 1200W and provides up to 5 minutes of backup power. Convenience features include adjustments, alarms, and status settings. The battery, accessible from the front, may be hot-swapped. While in standby mode (awaiting a power outage) the PowerBridge functions as a TGPC 600S power conditioner, serving its six Hubbell outlets. It is expected to ship late this year at $2500.

HP (the HP) is launching 10 televisions this fall. There are 3 LCDs (26-, 32-, and 37-inches), 3 plasmas, and 4 rear projection DLPs. Two of the latter are 1080p sets. All of the sets looked impressive; I was particularly taken by the resolution and black level of the 42-inch plasma ($3299). The 1080p DLP sets also looked very promising (we saw the 65-inch model, $4999), and offered not only an auto-iris for improved blacks and contrast ratio and HDMI inputs, but one feature missing on most of the 1080p sets launching this fall. They will accept a native 1080p input at either 24, 30, or 60 fps. When I asked how the HDMI inputs are able to handle a 1080p source (the present generation of HDMI is not generally compatible with this format, though future generations will be), the HP representative replied that the chips decoding the HDMI signal are hand selected. This sounded a bit strange to me, though I plan to investigate further to find out if the present incompatibility of HDMI with 1080p is due to a design limitation (in which case careful selection would be useless) or is simply a matter of tolerances (which could be overcome by selection). Another issue, of course, will be just how long an HDMI run is possible with 1080p. We shall see; a sample of this 1080p set has been requested for review.

Sony dropped a major bombshell at its press conference, and confirmed my expectations. When I went to the launch of the company’s new SXRD rear projection sets last month, I strongly suspected that a new SXRD front projector was coming soon. It was possible, I thought, that Sony would choose to incorporate some of the new features of the rear projection displays into an update of the Qualia 004, thus keeping front projection SXRD technology out of the reach of most buyers.

But I really was hoping for a new, less expensive SXRD projector. And I was right. The new VPL-VW100 includes a 400W Xenon projection lamp, powered zoom and focus, horizontal and vertical lens shift, and an automatic iris that produces a claimed peak contrast ratio of—sit down before you read this—15,000:1.

Oh, the price. $10,000. Shipment is expected in November.

I can’t top that today, but I suspect that more than a few front projector manufacturers might loose a little sleep this week. More tomorrow.