LATEST ADDITIONS

Toshiba has announced a new lineup of ten big screen rear-projection televisions built around Texas Instrument's HD2+ digital light processing (DLP) chip.

Apart from a slight change in the color of the case, there's little that visibly distinguishes Sharp's new XV-Z12000 DLP home theater projector from its predecessor, the XV-Z10000. The winner of our last Editors' Choice Platinum Award, in January 2004, the Z10000 sailed through the viewing sessions for its coverage in SGHT: a full review in October 2003 and a "Take 2" in November.

Most high-end speaker companies arrived late to the home-theater party. Dedicated to 2-channel music playback, they eventually split into three groups. One group would banish you to the Mines of Moria if you even uttered the words "home theater" in their presence. Another recognized the bottom-line impact of multichannel and reluctantly designed a few home theater pieces—perhaps a simple center and a subwoofer—for their dealers to sell along with their 2-channel models. A third developed a little more enthusiasm for home theater and built serious centers, subs, and surrounds to match the sophistication of their traditional designs.

When Sony announced the development of a new home video projector last spring, the buzz began. Would it be the fabled Grating Light Valve technology, which the company is known to be working on? Would it be LCD, DLP, or LCoS? Would it be something completely new?