Toshiba's execs literally beamed in from the 23rd century to inform us of its new LCD flat panels and HD DVD players, the latter of which have already been announced. But speaking directly to the Trekkie nerd inside me.
Before introducing its new D-ILA front projectors JVC offered a fascinating glimpse of what's beyond HD. It showed some flight simulation clips and some native 4K movie material (from and odd movie called <I>The Trident</I>) on its 4k x 2k D-ILA system in a movie theater-sized venue, on a screen not quite movie sized. This is far more pixel density than current 1920x1080 HD, and the depth and dimensionality of the image quickly demosntrated why I believe digital cinema in theaters needs 4K to take off.
The biggest news at today's Sony event was the HES-V1000 home entertainment server. This boxy marvel has a 200-disc Blu-ray, DVD, and CD drive as well as a 500GB hard drive to serve up all your audio/video fantasies to as many as 10 zones. It can even do so wirelessly. Coming in October for just $3499. Amazing. See press release. Sony's new BD player line includes the BDP-S500 ($699), already announced at IFA in Berlin, and the BDP-S2000ES ($1299, November) which is the first BD player to proudly wear the ES label with all the deluxe build quality that moniker implies. Finally, Barry Sonnenfeld extolled various Sony SXRD projectors that have graced his numerous home theaters. He also eloquently discussed his abuse at the hands of the Sony Corporation in general and a shadowy figure known as "Finer" in particular. Imagine, a man of his stature--director of The Addams Family and producer of the forthcoming Space Chimps--repeatedly forced to pay retail.
Steve Jobs has done it again. Stealing some thunder from another consumer-electronics confab (that would be CEDIA Expo 2007, where nearly all of S&V's editors are ensconced right now), the Apple Inc. CEO actually made not one but six big...
No, not that Apple. And no, not that technological species of Beatles. In a week when it was rumored that Apple Inc. would herald the long-awaited availability of the Beatles on iTunes, Apple Corps Ltd. instead divulged that the band's second...
Every year Apple stage a major product introduction just as CEDIA is getting underway. In case you hadn't heard, this year's news includes the iPod Touch, like the iPhone but without the phone; the iPod Classic, now with up to 160GB capacity; and a third-generation revamp of the iPod nano, now shorter and wider and therefore today's poster boy. You can get the complete details...elsewhere.
Although they won't be at CEDIA, Amimon WHDI chipset (see my <a href="http://blog.ultimateavmag.com/fredmanteghian/050607Wired/" Target="new">"Tired of Being Wired"</a> blog earlier this year) is finally ready for consumption. WHDI, for the acronymly-challenged, stands for Wireless High Definition Interface. Due to the high bandwidth requirements of 1080i and doubly high requirements of 1080p, wireless transmission of high definition digital video signals has been impossible or at least laboratory grade only. Already working with Motorola, Sanyo and Pixelworks, the Israeli-based Amimon hopes to end all that.
I'd say that LG got CEDIA 2007 off to a fast start, but the truth is that LG bent time and space by making an impact on CEDIA before CEDIA actually occurred. The press release for this player came to me a week ago under "embargo," which means I've been biting my virtual tongue for a week!
