Tom Norton

Panasonic's heart may be in plasma displays, but the company also launched a new line of LCD rear projection TVs at CES. There will be six models, three of them 1080p and three 720p. Each series will be available in 61-56-and 50-inch sizes. But the big news is that they all will use a new form of projection lamp, called LiFi, from LUXIM. This lamp is said to provide a much longer life than current UHP lamps, with a faster startup time and a wider color gamut that challenges the color available from the LED lamp-replacement that is just starting to show up in other RPTVs.

SVS is a company that specializes in subwoofers, sold mostly on-line. They had one of the few home theater demos at the Venetian, and the only one that actually used film as a program source. I know, that's tacky in a venue in which 99% of the demos are 2-channel audio, but they did their best.

I may be the only reporter to take pictures of raw loudspeaker drivers at this year's CES. But I've always been fascinated not only by the products we buy, but by the parts that go into them. And SEAS of Norway is one the biggest suppliers of high quality loudspeaker drivers. These new DXT tweeters offer controlled wide dispersion. Note the rings molded into the front plates of both versions. These rings produce diffraction, thereby widening the radiation pattern above 7kHz&mdash;the first time to my knowledge that this audiophile boogie-man has been deliberately generated to <I>enhance</I> speaker performance!

PMC also showed these new in- and on-wall speakers. The Wafer 1 sells for $1199 each (on-wall version) and the Wafer 2 for $1799 (on-wall). The demo was a bit atypical of how the environment of the speakers in an actual installation, but they still sounded quite good. The speakers are actually loaded into transmission lines, despite their small size.