Tom Norton

Panasonic showed two new portable Blu-ray players, the 10.1-inch DMP-B500 and the DMP-B100 (shown here). They don't have full HD resolution, but that shouldn't be a negative with such small screen sizes. I want one; they looked better, with a BD disc, than any portable DVD player I've ever seen. The one missing feature is an external video input. Why is that important? The player could then perform double duty as an off-screen monitor for use with a big screen projection system when it isn't needed as a portable device. An OLED display instead of the LCD imaging used here would also be nice, but a $3000 portable OLED Blu-ray player might be a hard sell

Toshiba showed a split-screen demo of 4K resolution on a relatively small LCD set. The purpose was apparently to show how their new Cell processing can upconvert 2K sources to 4K. You can't see anything in the photo, but on-scene the 4K was a bit sharper-though the 2K side looked softer than I would expect from good 2K material.

Like other manufacturers at the show, LG was showing off the claimed better blacks of its new sets. TruBlack is the company's designation for the upgraded black levels in its new plasma sets, like the 2010 PK950 shown here. While it wasn't easy to see the improvement on the brightly lit show floor, the new set did look subtly better.

JVC had three demos in its theater presentation. The first was a trailer in 2D, played back on the new DLA-HD990 consumer projector ($10,000, available now). It looked superb. The next was a 2D clip using the company's 4K, DLA-RS4000, a projector that will put a $150,000+ hole in your bank balance. It was the same 4K demo that JVC presented at the 2008 CEDIA, and here, like there, was head-and-shoulders the best-looking video at the show, either 2D or 3D. The third demo, a 3D presentation using two of the latter projectors, was dimensional enough, but for me was soft and lacking in the crisp detail I expect of HD, whether 3D or 2D. The source may have been to blame here-a dim underwater coral reef, and its residents, isn't the easiest subject to photograph well. In any case the three minute 3D clip was said to use between 1TB and 2DB data space!