LATEST ADDITIONS

A new challenger enters the ring.

It seems like, every week, a new company appears on the LCD scene. Try as we might to keep up with them all, some will admittedly never make it into the pages of the magazine; we just don't have the space. Every once in a while, though, a new company releases a product that demands our attention. WinBook's 40D1 is such a product.

Free HDTV are two words dear to the hearts of videophiles. We'll have a new source of it this summer when ABC launches a free online high-def channel at abc.com

Over the next four weeks Toshiba is embarking on an aggressive promotional campaign for HD DVD, timed to coincide with this Tuesday's release of the blockbuster <I>Matrix</I> trilogy, one of the most anticipated franchises to hit either HD format. The campaign will feature in-store rebates for HD DVD players, and will also have HD DVD promo trailers running in movie theaters with this summer's hottest movies, including, in a heavy dose of irony, Sony's own <I>Spider-Man 3</I> (wonder if anyone at Sony or the Blu-ray Association is wondering why he didn't think of that).

Behold the power of LEDs.

For the past year or two, the new high-definition disc formats have been dominating the headlines, but, believe it or not, there have been other developments in the realm of video—or at least in the way video is displayed. One of the newest is the use of LEDs as a light source instead of UHP (ultrahigh-pressure) lamps. Essentially, three tiny LEDs (one red, one green, and one blue) emit the light. Since there's one LED for each of the three primary colors, this eliminates the need for a color wheel. Video editor Geoffrey Morrison covered this technology in depth in his July 2006 GearWorks column (also available online). The benefit is that LEDs are far sturdier than a UHP lamp and should easily last until your next display upgrade, saving you money on replacement lamps. While the theory is that LEDs can run cooler than UHP lamps, at the moment, they can often be rather hot, which can lead to excessive fan noise coming from the back of the television. According to NuVision, the LEDs in the 52LEDLP run cool enough that you could touch them without hurting your hand.