Geoffrey Morrison

There is nothing more awe inspiring to both the grandeur and folly of humans as flying into L.A. at night. How the lights spread near infinite in all directions. How the houses inch their way up the mountains, like tendrils trying gradually to suffocate the last surviving ground. Somewhere in the pic to the left is our Woodland Hills Studio (seriously). I was returning from a Thanksgiving week spent in a strange and far away land: Alabama. I found out that spending a week without HD is hard. Spending a week without TiVo is harder.

I hate contrast ratio. It's a stupid and pretty much useless measurement. It's up there on the list with horsepower as a useless number that tells you next to nothing about actual performance. "My SUV has 300 horsepower!" yeah, and a 0-60 time pushing double digits. Congratulations. Hmm, bad example. 0-60 is a useless number too, but that's a different conversation.

I just can't resist poking fun at Sony's seemingly unending supply of strange and unpronounceable nomenclature. It has no direct bearing on a product, per se, but keeping track of all of the acronyms, abbreviations, and manufactured words takes up a sizable chunk of the already overtaxed (and undersized) mind of a reviewer. Regardless, Sony wasn't content just using the name LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) to describe their version of the technology. They instead call it SXRD (sex-erd?), or Silicon X-tal Reflective Display. Believe it or not, the "X-tal" is short for crystal. I'm not saying that JVC's name for their version of LCOS is any better: D-ILA. (This is an even less logical abbreviation: Direct-drive Image Light Amplifier? It doesn't amplify anything.) Each company takes pains to describe how different their version of the technology is from everybody else's. To be fair, this is true. Each of the two companies' core design and manufacturing are different. When it comes down to it, though, the proof is in the pudding, or, in this case, the RPTV.

One other thing that I want to talk about in this space is HD TV shows. While I won't force anyone to watch some of the movies I watch, I do however know good TV. One of the most distressing aspects of television watching is falling in love with a show, only to have it cancelled by an incompetent network (Firefly) or lack of viewers (tons of shows). So occasionally I'm going to put up a few shows that you should check out, if you haven't already. With few exceptions, they'll be HD, or at least widescreen. Trust me, if I'm watching them, they're worth watching.