LATEST ADDITIONS

Shane already nailed the Epson Cinema Pro 1080 UB ("Ultra Black") demo. It was amazing to see this kind of performance from an LCD. I'll add that Epson might be claiming a 50,000:1 contrast ratio, but that's with what has to be an awfully aggressive auto-iris in play. Kevin Miller, whose work continues to amaze, flew without a net using the chipset's native contrast ratio of 4,500:1, which is pretty outstanding on its own.

THX is working a new connect-the-world project, code named Blackbird. Having seen how easy it is for the general public to mangle their picture and sound with all the new toys they've been acquiring recently, Blackbird presents a solution for the three cardinal sins of home theater, by sending metadata in the form of control signals through HDMI to all Blackbird enabled devices in the chain.

SIM2's demo used three new projectors from that company. The first, and the one that impressed me most from a price/performance
aspect (though at $16,000 it isn't cheap by today's projector standards) was the HT-3000E. Incorporating TI's BrilliantColor technology, and SIM2's new Unishape lamp technology that can vary both the color of the lamp and its brightness in a dynamic, nearly instantaneous way, it presented a superb image with excellent deep blacks. Oddly, SIM2 was using a Firehawk screen-8' wide for the 3000E, 10' wide for the other two projectors, the C3X ($20,000) and the C3X 1080($30,000), both of which were demonstrated with anamorphic lenses. (There was a lot of anamorphia going around at this year's show.)

At the 2006 CEDIA Stewart Filmscreen showed a new, frameless,self-supporting rear projection glass material, Starglas. The company has now come up with a wide assortment of possible applications. Here a glass panel is mounted in a shallow cabinet at the foot of a bed. When needed, it rises up to viewing height. The image is projected from the rear, perhaps, as here, from a projector mounted in a cabinet at the other side of the room (presumably, a bedroom of more than shoebox size!). Ta Da! A substitute for a large plasma. The glass in the Starglas panel, incidently, is safety glass.