Tom Norton

The new 70" Sony SXRD—that is, <I>Bravia</I> SXRD, was producing a great picture previewing the upcoming (late October) Blu-ray release of <I>Spider-Man 3</I>. For details on the display see the entry below.

If you move up to the top of the KEF line you'll hit the flagship Reference series, also recently redesigned to eliminate the pod tweeters. Shown here is a cutaway of the smallest Reference model, the Reference 201/2 ($5000/pair). The port for this model, which is smaller than its predecessor, fires out of the top rear of the cabinet. The duct is visible at the upper left, just to the rear of the white damping material.

In a rare (for CEDIA) 2-channel detour, Pioneer showed a new CD/SACD (2-channel only) player and 2-channel receiver. The receiver will go for $899, the CD/SACD spinner for $499.

Sherwood Newcastle's new R-972 AV receiver looks hot. At $1799 it has HDMI 1.3a and on-board decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio, Trinnov room equalization, 100Wpc x7, and Faroudja video processing. The smaller R-872 also has HDMI 1.3a, Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio decoding, and something called SNAP room EQ. There was no one available to verify shipping dates, but I'll definitely be checking back-watch this space. $1700-$1800 seems to be the new sweet spot for high-end but pocketbook friendly AV receivers.