The strange and twisting-turning saga of the next-generation optical disc format war just got stranger with reports that China announced plans to develop and launch its own next –generation DVD format in 2008, seemingly placing China's massive manufacturing infrastructure at odds with the emerging Blu-ray and HD DVD standards.
Someone at Sharp noticed a gap. They make all sorts of flat-panel LCD units, from dinner-plate size to plasma size. Then they have two DLP projectors that handle the huge-screen market. (In fact, we gave the XV-Z12000 our Best Overall Projector RAVE Award for last year in our May 2005 issue.) But there's this gap, you see, above 45 inches for flat panels and below 80 or so inches for front projectors. What to do? How about rear projection?
While separate projectors and screens are not for everyone, for many of us they define the essence of the true home theater video experience. A big-screen television is fine as far as it goes, and certainly appeals to a wide market. But nothing quite matches the thrill of watching a theater-like image on a really big screen in a darkened room.
Over the years we've seen many home theater companies attempt to rekindle memories of Hollywood's grand, but nearly forgotten ballyhoo past (some of which would make even the great William Castle jealous). Several companies make devices that will shake, rattle, and roll your chair during passages with loud, deep bass. We've even seen subwoofers said to originate from research projects aiming to imitate the low frequency groans that elephants use to communicate to each other through dense brush.
There are cool products, and then there are cool products. While not quite living up to Bang & Olufsen's uber-cool status, some of the new "StyleFi" gadgets from Oregon Scientific certainly fall under the pretty-darn-cool category.
Panasonic, the self-proclaimed leader in plasma TV, doesn't like the way the company's plasma TVs look. It's not that they don't like the picture quality - ask Panasonic people and they'll give you umpteen reasons why they think images on their plasma TVs look stunning - but, flat as plasma TVs are (I believe the old phrase "flat as a pancake" will soon be replaced by "flat as a plasma TV"), Panasonic knows some folks just can't be satisfied. (They won't be happy until we have wall-paper televisions.)
In a surprising about-face Paramount Home Entertainment announced early this week that it intends to release its films on Blu-ray Disc. As confusing as this announcement makes the current format war in general, what's perhaps more confusing is that the studio ostensibly still plans to release films in the HD DVD format as well as Blu-ray in spite of the fact that all parties involved seem to agree that two formats will simply confuse consumers, perhaps to the point that they won't buy into either format.
Walk down any city street and you'll see nearly everyone sprouting earbuds and singing along to music heard only by themselves. Call me old-fashioned, but that bugs me. Back in the day, people who heard voices and music in their heads were thought to be witches and were burned at the stake. Today, they're just "Podding."
