Geoffrey Morrison

The power of processing.

Note: the other TVs in this Face Off include the Panasonic TH-42PD25 Plasma HDTV, and V inc. Vizio P42HD Plasma HD Monitor.

Perfect color and an amazing black level—in other words, everything you'd expect from a CRT.

It's hard to talk about CRTs these days. Sure, they still make up the majority of the display market, but they're just not sexy. It's like a Toyota Camry—it does everything it's supposed to do, and it does it well, but no one really lusts after it. That analogy is probably too harsh for the Toshiba 34HF84, which has more-accurate colors and a darker black level than any display I've reviewed in recent memory.

I've been a fan of Liquid Crystal on Silicon technology for some time now. It has the potential to take the better aspects of DLP and LCD and fuse them into a bright, high-resolution hybrid. Unfortunately, there are two main reasons why you don't see more LCOS products on the market. The first, and perhaps the most important, is the inability for anyone to efficiently mass-produce lots of working chips. At CES 2004, Intel announced that they were getting into the LCOS chip-making business. If anyone could make LCOS chips on the cheap, Intel could. Well, they couldn't. This is just fine for JVC, who has been making LCOS products for years under their D-ILA (Direct-drive Image Light Amplifier) moniker.

Silver surfer.

I've recently noticed that most video companies have names that begin with letters at the end of the alphabet and most audio companies have names that start with letters at the beginning of the alphabet. Most of my theories on this are far-fetched (some involve mind control) and get me "the look" from other people whenever I share them. My need to get out more notwithstanding, perhaps it has something to do with the word "video" starting with a "V" and the word "audio" starting with an "A." If that's the case, then Vidikron not only starts with a "V," but it shares its first three letters with the word "video."