Most of Hitachi's current line was announced last spring and is already in the shops. But two new developments will find their way into new models this year. A new blinking backlight system, which will show up first in 37- and 32-inch models, is said to significantly clean up motion blur.

Runco put on its usual slam-bang home theater demonstration, using its VX-2i 3-chip DLP projector configured for the company's automated CineWide (with Autoscope) feature. Together with an anamorphic lens, the latter processes film-based material originating with an aspect ratio of approximately 2.35:1 to have the same height as the more common 1.78:1 aspect ratio, but expanded out to fit a wider screen (rather than simply appearing as a letterbox inside a 1.78:1 frame). Each time I see this process demonstrated it looks better, and it looked terrific this time on a 115-inch wide, 1.3-gain Da-Lite screen. All but one of the demo pieces was from DVD, not high definition. The audio gear was all from Krell.

We haven't looked at any speakers from Klipsch in some time. They announced a fourth generation of their Reference Series, including five floorstanders, three bookshelf models, three center channel designs, three surrounds, and six powered subwoofers. Someone has been busy. Prices range from $199 each to $2498/pair.

Samsung launched a bewildering range of new plasmas, DLPs, and LCDs. Meanwhile, its on-line press kit provided no useful information (promising instead a 10-minute download, at 1:30AM, for an image only, with no clarifying text). So I'll just leave you with a few juicy tidbits. Their 83-inch LCD looked remarkably good, but is available to order only, at $150,000. The more real-world 40-inch model shown also had a strikingly good image, but no price was available. Samsung has developed several new technologies for its sets, including SmoothMotion The SmoothMotion image really did look better to the degree visible in the photograph. &mdash;<I>TJN</I>