Shane Buettner

Alright, let me say up front that I ripped that title from the new guy, David Vaughn. But I share David's opinion that this Tuesday is a very significant day of choice that could bear a surprising impact on the format war. This Tuesday <I>The Matrix</I> trilogy will be released on HD DVD, while the first two <I>Pirates of the Caribbean</I> movies hit Blu-ray (exclusively) just ahead of the third installment in that series hitting theaters.

Home theater or digital cinema at home? Wolf Cinema’s DLP digital projectors blur the line. The biggest, baddest Wolfs (Wolves?) are three-chip DLP projectors with full 1080p resolution, constant screen height, and scalable light output configurations for a wide variety of screen sizes, materials and lighting conditions- including very large screens. They are custom install centric in that they run hot and require professional installation and ventilation. Wolf Cinema’s distributor seems open to getting us a review sample, so it looks like I might get to take this Ferrari for a drive!

Leon speakers are all about audio- audio for your video. The company custom builds speakers around video displays of all kinds, there is nothing off the shelf about any Leon system. On display at CEDIA was this whopping 140” wide Stewart CineCurve screen (that’s almost 12 feet wide for those of you keeping score at home!) with accustom built Leon speaker system tracing the screen. I'm cheating calling it a soundbar, but I don't know what else to call it and I'm lazy. I don’t know how much the speakers cost, but if you can afford a CineCurve that size, and a projector to drive it, you don’t care!

It’s a big deal whenever one of audio’s legendary speaker designer/manufacturers puts out a new speaker. More significant still is when a company like Thiel drops a speaker on us that will cost something less than $1K/ea.