Tom Norton

I was impressed, and surprised, by the quality of the image that Meridian's iRIS produced on a modestly sized, flat panel screen. More than a simple iPOD dock, this $400 jewel upconverts the low rez image on a video iPod to 1080p, cleans it up in various ways, and outputs it to your HDTV. No, it's not high def, or even DVD-quality, but it was way better than VHS and more than watchable. Two other nearby screens also showed different program material (animation and TV-based) but they weren't as impressive as this one. If the color balance looks a bit whacked in the photo, it wasn't the demo, but rather my hurried attempts at color correction. The untouched, available light photo was badly skewed by the lighting in the convention center.

THX is now getting into video product certification, and was running training sessions throughout the show. As yet few video products carry the THX imprimatur.

At the 2006 CEDIA Stewart Filmscreen showed a new, frameless,self-supporting rear projection glass material, Starglas. The company has now come up with a wide assortment of possible applications. Here a glass panel is mounted in a shallow cabinet at the foot of a bed. When needed, it rises up to viewing height. The image is projected from the rear, perhaps, as here, from a projector mounted in a cabinet at the other side of the room (presumably, a bedroom of more than shoebox size!). Ta Da! A substitute for a large plasma. The glass in the Starglas panel, incidently, is safety glass.

I could tell you that this is a better picture of the Samsung SP-A800 we reported on earlier in the show. But it isn't. It's the Samsung SP-A400, and apart from its smaller size, it's a dead ringer in appearance for the SP-A800. It's a 1280x768 design. Didn't catch the price yet, but it's sure to be lots cheaper than the circa $10,000 price of its big brother.