CEDIA 2016

At last year’s CEDIA we reported on a new DLP imagining chip from Texas Instruments that offered one-half the pixels required for full 4K resolution. To produce 4K, the digital micromirrors first display half the pixels in the image, then microseconds later shift by a fraction of a pixel to show the others. While this is similar to the pixel shifting (a.k.a. wobulation) now used by JVC in most of its projectors (the new BLUEscent excepted), and by Epson in its laser model, TI argues that its micromirrors can shift far more rapidly.

The booths at CEDIA are invariably more modest in scale than what you’ll see at CES. But in LG’s case, that’s not for lack of trying. Outside the entrance, visible on the left side of the photo here, fifteen 55-inch OLED displays were clustered closely together, their thin bezels rendering the seams between them barely visible.

Likely no audio company exhibiting at CEDIA is as well known for digital audio as Meridian. The company pioneered and was built-on the idea of maintaining an digital signal path; keeping the signal in the digital domain from source to speaker and at every step in between. And while this is terrific in an all Meridian system, it doesn’t work so well when trying to integrate with other products.

Now Meridian is releasing the new 258 eight-channel power amplifier that will allow people to enjoy Meridian’s terrific sound quality with any speaker of their choice. The new high-performance, cool-running Class D amplifier comes in a svelte 1U rack mountable chassis and is rated to deliver 100-watts per channel into 4 ohms or 70-watts per channel into 8 ohms.

Speaker maker Atlantic Technology will complement its lineup of speakers and soundbars with its first wireless multiroom-audio speaker, which will feature Google Cast, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Montreal's Totem Acoustic is a speaker brand we haven't celebrated as often as we'd like because for many years its lines didn't reflect a surround sensibility. But CEDIA 2016 turned up two new lines—one with a center speaker, the other with an LCR—that got our attention.

In an earlier blog I suggested that SIM2 with its new Nero4 projector was the first to use TI’s new pseudo 4K chip, meaning that it uses pixel shifting on its digital micromirrors to put the full resolution of a 4K source on screen, but not all at once. Half of the resolution is presented first, then microseconds later the mirrors shift by a fraction of a pixel and the rest of the image is displayed. Sounds fishy if you haven’t seen it, but it works...