The Big Picture

In a secret, blacked-out room, Panasonic was demonstrating its new professional reference monitor, the TH-42BT300, shown here between last year's TH-42PF11 to the left and this year's TH-42PF20 on the right. In addition to a 42-incher (~$4000), the new model will be available in a 50-inch size for around $5000.

Sponsored by NewTek, maker of the TriCaster portable streaming-video production system, the second annual Broadcast Minds roundtable at NAB offered a lively panel discussion about video production in the online era. Joining the panel was (left to right above) Leo Laporte, whose TWiT network is the official webcaster of the NAB show; Steve Hellmuth, executive vice president of operations and technology for NBA Entertainment; moderator Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, editor of Streaming Video magazine; Mark Fratto, director of athletic communications at St. John's University in New York; and Adam Corolla, well-known comic who was introduced as having the most downloaded podcast in the world.

Panasonic's 152-inch 4K plasma is nothing new, but it never fails to impress, especially when seen next to a person, in this case PR rep Courtnee Coburn. CTO Eisuke Tsuyuzaki told me some people have actually built a house around this monster!

One of the sessions in the Content Theater was presented by 3net, the 24/7 3D channel co-created by Imax, Discovery Channel, and Sony and currently available on DirecTV. In addition to the big projected image, six 42-inch Sony monitors located along the walls were showing the same content so we could see what it looks like on a typical home display, for which 3net's original content is designed.

Yesterday, Panasonic and Xpand, makers of mostly commercial active-shutter 3D glasses, announced a standard synchronization protocol for this type of eyewear called M-3DI. The new standard is intended to improve compatibility between 3D TVs and home projectors, computers, and digital cinema, a problem that has plagued the current 3D marketplace since its inception over a year ago.

As many of you know, I appear as a regular guest on The Tech Guy, a nationally syndicated call-in radio talk show hosted by Leo Laporte. The show airs live on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 AM to 2 PM Pacific time; some stations carry all or part of the show live, while others play the recording at different times. My segment is usually on Sundays right after the 11:30 AM news break, when I talk about home theater and answer reader and listener questions.

On February 5 and 6, I had the incredible opportunity to sit in for Leo as the guest host of The Tech Guy for the entire show. Leo was on vacation for three weeks, and I happened to be in the San Francisco Bay Area during that weekend, so we agreed that I would host the show from his studio, answering phone questions about—what else?—home theater.

I just saw Rango, the new animated western populated by anthropomorphic animals and starring the inimitable Johnny Depp voicing the title character, and I thought it was a real hoot. Not only were the voice characterizations superb, but it has some of the best animation I've seen to date—and it's not even 3D!