Panasonic's video division has staked its life on plasma televisions. So far it looks like a pretty good bet. Sure, the company sells flat panel LCD and rear projection LCD and DLP TVs. But newspapers, magazines and televisions are host to countless Panasonic ads for plasmas and nary a one for the other technologies. And have you seen Panasonic promotions for an "LCD Concierge" service like one offered for its plasmas? All of this is paying off. Panasonic sells one-third of all plasmas sold in the United States – more than any other company.
Whither SED? That was a question on the minds of many journalists walking through Toshiba's city block-sized booth at CES 2007. As it turns out, Toshiba has sold its stake in the burgeoning flat panel display technology to Canon, its partner in the venture.
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In the February issue, the Samsung HL-S6188W was derided, and rightly so, for it’s staggering light output of almost 170 ft-Lamberts. For a 61-inch display, this is way to bright to watch in a dark room. It’s the kind of light output that hurts, literally.
Coming soon to a computer monitor near you is Joost. Formerly known as the Venice Project, this new mode of video delivery was invented by the founders of Skype and Kazaa. No, it's not a video download service. Nor is it a file-sharing application. Instead, it delivers video in the form of P2P streaming. Among the components of the system are powerful data compression, a global index to coordinate the flow of data, and 40TB of server capacity to augment users' hard-drive cacheing, making this what the inventors describe as a "hybrid" system. Thousands of beta users in several countries are already having fun with it and the service will launch officially in June. The Joosties seem willing to make nice with content producers, with Warner Music in the fold, and you'll even see ads for T-Mobile and Wrigley chewing gum. Eventually the service may move from the Internet to set-top boxes. Official site, Wired feature.
Processing Modes: DD, DD-EX, ProLogicIIx, DTS, DTS-ES/Discrete/Matrix/Neo: 6, DTS 24/96, SRS Circle Surround II, HDCD decoding
Features We Like: THX Select2-Certified, Four HDMI 1.2 inputs and two outputs with video upconversion and cross-conversion, four component inputs, Audyssey auto calibration and room EQ, three coaxial and four toslink optical digital audio inputs, one 7.1-channel analog audio input, XM Ready, 7.1-channel preamp outs, AV sync delay, multi-source/multi-zone
