Thomas J. Norton

Putting the theater in home theater.

It wasn’t so long ago—less than 10 years, in fact—that video projection in the home meant a bulky CRT projector that often weighed 200-plus pounds and took hours to set up. It used three separate CRTs, one each for red, green, and blue, which had to be precisely converged and focused on site. Once the setup was complete, you couldn’t move the projector without risking a need to repeat the entire operation. The CRTs also tended to drift, so periodic reconvergence was needed, either by the dealer or by a tech-savvy owner. It was complicated and expensive. Once you threw the cost of the then-expensive video scalers (needed by the day’s standard-definition sources) into the mix, the proposition could easily run into six-figure prices. But the best of these CRT setups were truly amazing—even in standard definition.

There's a surprisingly wide range of preferences among audio-video fans. I'll categorize them here into two broad groups: classic 2-channel audiophiles and home theater fans. Not that these groups don't overlap. They often do. But there are listeners in each group who don't intersect with the other. For fans of 2-channel music who are open to adding surround sound as long as it doesn't hamper their enjoyment of listening to stereo recordings, there's a fairly easy way to make that happen.

These days, you can't tell the players in television manufacturing without a scorecard. At every CES, including this year's, new names sprout like kudzu. Some are strange and unfamiliar. Others are old standards, but under new ownership. Many will be gone by next year.

When you think of Hewlett-Packard you don't think first of test gear or televisions. But HP began life as a manufacturer of specialized test and medical equipment. Today, however, it's the world's largest seller of home and business computers.