The brand name may be new to you, but NuVision, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, didn’t just arrive on the 3:10 from Yuma [ba-da-bing!—Ed.]. One of the new display companies that have sprung up in the transition to HDTV, it has been marketing video products in the U.S. for several years with little fanfare.
For the adventurous home theater, Joy Carpets & Co, offers a range of carpets, from conventional to truly wild.
Not to be a party pooper, but the best carpet for a darkened home theater using a projector and screen is as close to jet flat black as you can manage. Black walls and ceilings, too. Just sayin'.
I think a hundred or so interior decorators were just administered CPR.
All of us are familiar with LG’s successful use of OLED technology for flat screen UHDTVs. We also know that Sony is marketing its own OLED sets this year. But Sony buys its OLED panels from LG Display (an independent entity from LG itself, though connected to it in some inscrutable way). In fact, LG Display is currently the only company in the world that manufactures OLED panels for consumer televisions. LG’s arch-rival Samsung is a leader in producing OLEDs for cell phone displays, but a few years back decided against marketing OLED HDTVs, at least for now.
Other companies are also marketing OLED sets, but none of them are currently available in the US. And at present all TV OLED panels come from LG Display. But that doesn’t mean that these sets are identical. Each maker uses its own unique electronics and video processing.
While you can’t yet purchase an OLED display here in the US apart from an LG or Sony, it’s useful to know a little about others offering this technology. The more OLEDs sold worldwide, the more viable the technology will remain and, ultimately, the faster its currently high prices will drop...
For a relatively new brand, Olevia has made a fast start. When I attended the launch of its new assembly plant in Ontario California recently, I was impressed by the efficiency of the operation, not to mention the gutsy move to open an assembly plant in the continental U.S. rather than, say, just across the border in Mexico. This says a lot about the confidence that Olevia, and its parent company Syntax-Brillian Corporation, has about its future.
In many respects, AV receivers haven't changed much in recent years. There have been no major breakthroughs in amplifier design. 7.1-channels aren't that new. Multichannel analog inputs have been a fixture for some time. Dolby Digital and DTS have been with us since the Jurassic Age—or at least since <I>Jurassic Park</I>. And FM and AM sections are about as exciting as <I>Halloween 14</I>.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Outstanding overall performance
Detailed info screen
Plays virtually everything
Minus
No headphone output
No support for HDCD
THE VERDICT
Oppo’s first Ultra HD Blu-ray player has been eagerly anticipated by UHD enthusiasts everywhere. The wait was worth it.
We’re now into the second year of the Ultra HD Blu-ray era, but up to this past January, Samsung, Philips, and Panasonic pretty much had the UHD player market all to themselves. That month’s Consumer Electronics Show, however, saw the introduction of models from LG and Sony, together with new ones from Samsung and Panasonic.
The prices on front projectors might not be dropping quite as fast as those on flat panel displays, but they are definitely coming down. And while much of the action is concentrated in the $5,000-$10,000 range, that's still a load of cash for most of us. If projector manufacturers want to compete even in a small way with the flat panels that often go out the door for under $3,000, they need a cost leader—and a full 1080p design—that can slug it out in the trenches.
If projector manufacturers want to compete even in a small way with the flat panels that often go out the door for under $3,000, they need a cost leader—and a full 1080p design—that can slug it out in the trenches. Optoma knows this, and its new HD80 single-chip DLP design, at $2,699 (with a current replacement lamp cost of $349), slides comfortably into this niche.
I've only been living with the new Optoma HD81 DLP projector for a little over a week, but it's already becoming obvious that new 1080p projectors selling for more than the Optoma's $7,000 price are likely to have a difficult time in the market. Even the sub-$7,000 price category is destined to be a battleground. There have already been announcements from Sony (SXRD), Mitsubishi (LCD), Panasonic (LCD), Sanyo (LCD), and BenQ (DLP) of new 1080p projectors priced lower, and in some cases considerably lower, than the Optoma. We expect to see more, and perhaps a lot more, such models at the 2006 CEDIA Expo in Denver later this week. We'll be reporting on them, and other new developments, in daily reports from the show floor. Stay tuned.