LATEST ADDITIONS

The newest addition to Samsung's stable of LCD TVs is the LN65B650, a 65-inch monster with conventional backlighting that will list for $6000. Of particular note is a picture mode called BD-Wise, which is found on select 2009 TVs and all of the company's '09 Blu-ray players. BD-Wise lets the TV and Blu-ray player communicate and automatically set their parameters depending on the content. A satellite feed looked quite bad with lots of artifacts, but Blu-ray looked <I>much</I> better.

At the end of the day, I stopped by the Digital Projection booth to see its new offerings, which I blogged about before the show. The M-Vision Cine LED was being compared with an iVision 30 lamp-based projector on adjacent screens, and while the iVision was brighter, even on a larger screen, the Cine LED exhibited better color saturation. In another part of the booth, the HighLite 3-chip DLP looked great, with excellent color and detail.

This surround preamp/processor from Rotel is so new, it isn't even in the company's CEDIA press kit. Shown here in a rack below a Rotel tuner, the RSP-1580 sports a large LCD display and incorporates dual audio DSP chips with a combined processing speed of 3000 MIPS as well as the latest Genesis video processor that uses 12 bits per color. It can decode all the current audio formats, and a front-panel USB port lets you connect an iPod. Perhaps most interesting is its integrated HDMI matrix switcher with four inputs and four outputs, allowing you to send the signal from any input to any output. The RSP-1580 will list for $4500 when it ships in January.

SIM2's C3X line of 3-chip DLP projectors has a long and venerable history, capped by the latest model, the C3X Lumis. A custom implementation of Texas Instruments' Dynamic Black feature leads to a claimed contrast ratio up to 35,000:1, and a new dimmable 280W lamp can output up to 3000 lumens. The demo was very impressive, with excellent dark detail in a clip from <I>The Dark Knight</I>. The C3X Lumis is available now for $36,000.