CEDIA 2006 was something of a riches to rags story. We saw many three-chip 1080p DLP projectors announced at prices that were ridiculous and embarrassing, stretching into the many tens of thousands of dollars. And they were introduced with straight faces. Granted, these are high light output designs that can drive enormous screens. But I didn't find these many of these designs particularly interesting. Too many recently announced projectors appear to be aimed at the ultra-wealthy sliver of the market, and don't back up their high prices by offering technical innovation that can't be found in more reasonably priced models. About the only things these announcements did was to make the $15-20K single-chip DLPs seem like they aren't quite as hideously over priced!

Whither SED? That was a question on the minds of many journalists walking through Toshiba's city block-sized booth at CES 2007. As it turns out, Toshiba has sold its stake in the burgeoning flat panel display technology to Canon, its partner in the venture.

The format war just took and interesting turn as some juicy pre-CES news leaked out to the Internet today courtesy of the New York Times. Next week at CES Warner will be announcing the Total HD disc, which will carry both Blu-ray and HD DVD transfers of a title on a single disc.

In late November Comcast began offering on-demand movie titles from every major studio day and date with the films' DVD debut in its Pittsburgh and Denver markets for $4 per viewing. On-demand video availability for major movies has typically lagged 30-45 days behind the DVD release, creating an exclusive window for DVD sales and rentals, which has certainly not helped on-demand's popularity. If this practice extends beyond these markets and to other cable and satellite operators it seems likely that DVD sales will continue to erode.