Fred Manteghian Blog

I was in Florida last year at a friend’s house and dropped into a Best Buy to get some music or movies for us. I asked the first sales associate foolish enough to make eye contact where the SACDs were. He didn’t know what I meant. “The CDs?” – no, the SACDs.

Running around like a chicken with its head cut off, going from one press event to another, oft times miles apart, is what the Consumer Electronics industry likes to do to the press on the day before CES officially begins. While I usually oblige, this year more urgent business meant leaving running the gauntlet to my more willing cohorts. So what have I missed? Hard to tell, I’m 30,000 feet in the air at the moment, somewhere between Connecticut and Las Vegas, without a Wi-Fi in sight, but I’m sure I’ll hear about Thursday morning at breakfast with the other writers.

There’s no better way to make yourself seem foolish than by trying to predict the future, but if I limit myself to one year, how far off can I be?

While we’re sitting around waiting for Blu-ray or HD-DVD high definition players and discs to hit the shelves, we can still do a little hi-def pickin’ and chosin’ on our own beyond switching hi-def channels. On Apple’s web site, you can find links to hi-def trailers that you can download and watch right now, like <A HREF="http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/x3/" TARGET="NEW"> <b> this one for <i> X3</i></b></A>. Of course, you need a home theater PC if you want to show it on your projector or hi-def set, but I was satisfied to watch it on my not too shabby IBM T42P laptop. Even though the 15” screen’s aspect ratio is an old school 1.33:1, the resolution is an eye-popping 1600 x 1200.

That’s right, don’t buy an Xbox 360, especially if you live in Connecticut. This just out – the models being distributed in Connecticut are defective <i>and</i> Microsoft’s warranty has a special Connecticut exclusion clause which invokes double secret arbitration as the consumer’s only remedy in the case of a defect, odds of which are, I’m told off the record, in the very high 90th percentile.

We enjoyed the company of eight first year law students last night. Taking the shortest of breaks during the “reading week” which precedes final exams, they came for dinner and a few even stayed for a movie. Some of my daughter’s friends have become regulars of the blog, so they were expecting shock and awe. I don’t believe they left disappointed.

Michael Fremer is bitching (what’s new) about Sony giving owners of their $5,000 <A HREF=" http://ultimateavmag.com/rearprojectiontvs/1105sony/"> SXRD rear projection display</A> the ability to actually tweak it, and tweak it good. Mikey, I say, Hallelujah, and what-the-hell’s-it-to-ya’? It’s not like the good old days where you could really damage a CRT if you cranked the contrast up too much. In fact that’s what manufacturer used to do to make their sets stand out at Bob’s TV and Refrigerator Warehouse. It’s also why, until rear projection LCD and DLP projectors came along, I never recommended anyone buy a floor model.