LATEST ADDITIONS

CEDIA 2011
Entertainment Experience TruVue Vango LED DLP Projector
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 11, 2011
As I was cruising through the Screen Innovations booth, I discovered a projector I had never heard of before, though I learned that it wasn't new at the show. The TruVue Vango from Entertainment Experience is a single-chip DLP model with LED illumination and a claimed contrast ratio of 100,000:1. It comes with an eeColor TruVue color processor, which is also sold by SpectraCal (see next blog entry for more on that).
CEDIA 2011
THX Media Director
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 11, 2011
THX has been talking about its Media Director technology for some time, but it's finally being introduced to the marketplace. Media Director embeds metadata in the content itself, describing how the content was created and how it should be rendered in order to preserve the creator's artistic intent and assure optimal presentation. To do so, the so-called content descriptors are created along with the content and remain associated with it all the way to the end user's display and audio system, which automatically adjust their settings for optimal playback, offsetting the calibrated settings as needed for that content only.

The first Blu-rays to include Media Director metadata are the new Star Wars discs, but other studios are ramping up to include it in their new releases. On the hardware side, the first player to have Media Director capabilities is the Dune HD Blu-ray/media streamer from HDI Dune (yeah, I had never heard of them, either). As you can see in the photo above, it was implemented in a Sharp Elite TV at the THX booth, and it will be part of the 2012 Sharp Elites. In fact, starting in 2012, products that hope to be THX-certified must include Media Director functionality.

CEDIA 2011
DVDO 6x2 Matrix Switcher
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 11, 2011
DVDO was demonstrating a prototype technology from parent company Silicon Image in the form of a 6-in/2-out HDMI matrix switcher. The important features include InstaPort, which allows switching inputs in less than a second because all ports are active all the time, and InstaPrevue, which displays PIP insets from all inputs as seen in this photo, letting you select the input you want based on the content. No pricing or availability was revealed.
CEDIA 2011
DVDO Edge Green Video Processor
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 11, 2011
The popular Edge video switcher/processor from DVDO is now greener thanks to lower power consumption than the previous generation. It provides five HDMI inputs and four analog-video inputs with five audio inputs and two HDMI outputs—one A/V and the other audio-only for an AVR or pre/pro. As before, it upscales all inputs to 1080p and cleans up all sorts of video problems. It's shipping now for $499.
CEDIA 2011
DVDO AirHD Wireless HDMI
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 11, 2011
Wireless HDMI was a common theme at CEDIA. DVDO's offering in this regard is AirHD, which uses the 60GHz WirelessHD system. It can convey up to 1080p/60 and 3D up to 30 meters within a room, but not from one room to another. A package with one transmitter (seen here on the right) and one receiver will go for $129 when it ships in November. The booth demo included an Epson projector with a built-in receiver.
CEDIA 2011
Panasonic Projects
Tom Norton  |  Sep 11, 2011
Panasonic was demonstrating its new PT-AE7000 3D projector ($3500) on a 100-inch (diagonal) Joe Kane Affinity screen (gain 1.1) from Da-Lite. Granted that the 3D program material was all animated, which is almost always impressive on a video display, it nevertheless looked superb. The trailers from Toy Story 3, The Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast all had me salivating for the full releases (scheduled for October--at least for the latter two). It was interesting to see that the 3D re-processing of the older hand drawn animation on Lion KIng and Beastlooked very good, with a minimum of the layered cardboard cutout effect. Kudos here to both Disney and Panasonic.
CEDIA 2011
Martin Logan
Tom Norton  |  Sep 11, 2011
The new Martin Logan Montis ($10,000/pair) was producing compelling music in one of the shows isolated (sort of) sound rooms, ably assisted by a pair of humongous McIntosh amps (for newbies, that's a "tosh" without the "a" and without the iPod).
CEDIA 2011
Focal Range
Tom Norton  |  Sep 11, 2011
Robert Deutsch very favorably reviewed the Focal Chorus 826W Anniversary Editiion late last year in Stereophile. Now there's an entire new Chorus W lineup (the W stands for the incorporation of Focal's sandwich cone material into the line--the standard Chorus models do not have this). The 826W ($3495/pr) is the second from the left in the photo. New are the bigger 836W ($4195/pr), the 807W bookshelves ($1495/pr), the CC800W center ($795) and the SW800W subwoofer ($1595).
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CEDIA 2011
Aural Sex
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Sep 11, 2011
Sound control company Auralex brought examples of the company’s HD Cinema Series of absorption panels that not only seriously improve the sound quality of your home theater room – they can seriously improve the looks of your room, too. The panels come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors; so you can mix and match panels to come up with your own unique look. Panels start at $255/each.
CEDIA 2011
Lexicon Takes a Quantum Leap
Tom Norton  |  Sep 11, 2011
The new Lexicon MP-20 Media Processor is not yet shipping, but promises to be killer, both for your home theater and your bank account (the exact price has not yet been announced, but should be somewhere south--but not too far south--of $20,000). It incorporates Harman's new QuantumLogic audio processing (more on this below), 12.4 channels, 192/24-bit audio resolution, 8 HDMI 1.4a inputs, 1080p video scaling, a large front panel screen interface with soft buttons for selection the desired options, auto calibration and room EQ, and more.

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