LATEST ADDITIONS

Murphy's got this law, see? When you only have one working prototype of your new product, but you go ahead and set yourself to be the first press event for a room full of just fed journalists who are eager to hear or see something exciting, well then, you can rest assured knowing your prototype will crap out. That's what happened at 10 AM when the ZVOX 450 ZBIT the ZDUST just before the press arrived. Someone said it was a Bill Gates moment.

Outlaw Audio took the wraps off the company's latest and most powerful amplifier, the 7900, which is rated at 7 x 300 watts continuous into 8 ohms and 7 x 450 watts into 4 ohms. At 125 pounds (56.6990463 kilograms), the amp weighs just a couple of pounds more than former talk-show host Ricki Lake's new bod (US Magazine says she went from size 24 to 4 without surgery). Unlike Ms. Lake, the 7900 eats so much electricity, it uses two separate power cords. Outlaw Audio suggests you plug it in to two different outlets, so make sure you have an extra-long extension cord. In addition to the price of the extension cord, figure on spending $3,500 for the 7900.

Outlaw has also jumped into the full-range speaker business with its recently introduced Outlaw Bookshelf Speaker ($1000/pair (in black, $1100/pair in cherry, available now). It employs a 5.25" woofer-midrange and 1" silk-dome tweeter, both of them sourced from an unnamed but well-known Scandinavian driver manufacturer. The Bookshelf is shown here with the new Outlaw LCR Speaker. More on the LCR in the following report.

While the new Outlaw speakers use imported parts, they are assembled and tested in the U.S. (If you're wondering, the model designations are simply the Outlaw Bookshelf Speaker and the Outlaw LCR Speaker. Like all Outlaw products, they are available only on-line.)

Yes, as a matter of fact all the news coming in for the next few days will be ground into show Blog fodder, including this. Marantz isn't among the exhibitors here at HE 2007 and I don't know if anyone will be using the <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/videoprojectors/506marantzvp11s1/">VP-11S1</A> for demonstration. Nevertheless, the projector is getting a running change in production to HDMI 1.3, but the retail price will remain fixed at $20K. Deep Color and 12-bit color depth are being touted, but don't get too excited about that yet. Consumer HD sources aren't using either currently. Marantz will be offering upgrades to existing VP-11S1 owners (like me), but pricing for that isn't established yet. While I won't be jumping in for the Deep Color, my experience switching among the different species of HDMI suggests that as everything else moves to 1.3-spec that switching issues might be minimized being 1.3 all the way around. Stay tuned on that one- if Marantz talks me into upgrading my 11S1 I'll let you know what that gets me!