LATEST ADDITIONS

<B>Parasound's Zcustom Line Now Features Dedicated HDMI Switcher</B>
<BR>
The more things change, the more things stay the same. Several years ago as component video began to appear on more and more sources and displays, those living on the bleeding edge quickly accrued more component sources than their displays and/or surround processors and AVRs could effectively switch. Flash forward and the same thing is happening with HDMI sources now. Many users have a DVD player and an HD set-top box of some kind, and yet it's still shockingly rare to find a display with even two HDMI inputs. Well, Parasound has an answer for you.

Manhattan's Upper West Side is home to many world-class attractions—Lincoln Center, the Museum of Natural History, and the Fairway cheese department, to name just a few—but electronics-industry press events are relatively rare. Yet there I was, a 15-minute walk from my apartment, in a store full of reporters getting Toshiba's marketing message about HD DVD. The event at P.C. Richard & Sons was day one of a 40-city roadshow that will be repeated in stores throughout the country. The highlight of the presentation was a split-screen comparison of high- and standard-definition material, including a boat that glided from one side of the screen to the other, acquiring depth and detail along the way. Consumers had already placed orders that day for players to be delivered in the last week of March, we were told. Contrary to a rumor reported here, an interim agreement on encryption keys will allow hardware and software manufacturers to move forward in tandem. Still unanswered are the two big questions: (1) Can either HD DVD or Blu-ray prosper in a format war? And (2) what impact will the down-res of component video output have on owners of early-generation HDTVs? Toshiba has a new HD DVD website here and Darryl Wilkinson offers more details here. I, however, got the free long-sleeved HD DVD T-shirt, available in a choice of emerald, rose, and blue-grey. Word up, Blu-ray people—this is going to be a hard T-shirt to beat.

It was the most ambitious do-it-yourself carpentry work I've done in five years, ever since I covered the windows in my home theater studio to shut out the light and minimize extraneous outside sounds. The latest project involved building a false wall directly in front of an existing wall, not only to conveniently hang an expected ongoing parade of flat panel displays coming in for review, but also to facilitate a planned series of on-wall speaker reviews. There's no question that on-wall speakers are a significant trend, and one that we can't continue to ignore here at <I>Ultimate AV</I>. As for in-walls, well, that's a project for the future.

Goodbye analog; hello 1080p.

Welcome to our third biannual RPTV Face Off. For those of you just joining us, we've brought together today six 1080p RPTVs at the roughly $4,000 price point. The excitement is palpable, the TVs warmed up, and the judges ready to stare.