The show floor was cheek-by-jowl with impressive flat panel displays, but none of them stopped me in my tracks faster than this display from Fujitsu. The new Aviamo series is still tentative for production. Reportedly, it was not scheduled to be shown until CES, but Fujitsu decided to bring the prototypes to CEDIA to see the reaction. There are three models, a smaller 1080p CD (37" I believe), and two 1080p plasmas. All three have the latest iteration of Fujitsu's AVM video processing: AVMIII.

The LCD looked very good, but it was the plasmas that really caught my eye. Of course, no dark scenes were shown in the demo, but that aside, they were absolute knockouts--easily the best-looking flat panels (plasma or LCD) at the show.

At their projected prices, they had to be. I heard more than one set of prices, but the lowest was $10,000 for the 50" and $15,000 for the 65". I'm sure these figures (or any other guesstimates) are not yet set in stone, since production is unlikely until mid 2007, should Fujitsu go ahead with the project. A note to Fujitsu; be sure and provide the Aviamos with full adjustability for important aspects of their performance, including color temperature at both the top and botttom of the brightness range. Hide it in a service menu if you must, but make it easily accessible to qualified calibrators. Previous Fujitsu's have either lacked this full top-bottom ajustability or required a special remote to reach it.

Needless to say, the screen shot in no way resembles the the real image quality I saw from these sets.