The debate over the sound of vacuum tubes versus solid-state audio electronics has endured since the invention of the transistor, and it's not likely to be settled any time soon. With the new C-60 CD player from Australian boutique maker <A href="http://www.vincentaudio.com.au">Vincent Audio</A>, there's no need to decide—you can switch between its tube-based and solid-state output stages as desired.
According to Erick Lichte in his CES 2011 report for Stereophile, the SS-101 2-channel power amp from Denmark's Vitus Audio sounded great. How could it get even better? By putting each channel in its own chassis with its own power supplyand thus, the SM-101 monoblock was born.
Last week at T.H.E. Show in Newport Beach, CA, I heard the G2 Giya speaker from Vivid Audio for the first time. This is the newer, smaller sibling to the original G1 Giya, both of which I profiled here.
When it comes to hotbeds of high-end audio, South Africa is not the first place that comes to mind. Yet this is the home of <A href="http://www.vividaudio.com">Vivid Audio</A>, maker of beautifully curvaceous speakers, including the flagship Giya, which is available in two versions—the original G1 and the new, smaller G2 introduced at CES 2010.
Price: $1,499 At A Glance: Poor blacks & shadow detail • Good color • Good detail with 1080p content • Very limited placement options
In my ongoing quest for low-cost projectors that perform well, I came across the H1085 from Vivitek. Unlike most such projectors, this one is available only through custom installers. How does it perform? Let's find out.
I saw a couple of LED-illuminated DLP front projectors at CEDIA last year, so it wasn't all that surprising to see another one at CES. Vivitek introduced the H6080FD, a 1080p projector with a single DMD chip and RGB LEDs that are supposed to last 20,000 hours. This 1080p model claims 800 lumens of light output and a 50,000:1 native contrast ratio. Availability is said to be the May/June time frame, and the price will be around $20,000.
After what has seemed like an interminable wait, Vizio's 21:9 CinemaWide LED-LCD flat-panel TV is finally available to consumers at Vizio's website. With a native pixel resolution of 2560x1080, this XVT-series set is the first ultra-widescreen flat panel available in the US that displays 2.35:1 movies without black bars above and below the image.
About a year ago, Philips introduced an LCD TV with an aspect ratio of 21:9 (2.33:1), but it was never made available in the US. Now, Vizio is working on the same idea as demonstrated by this concept piece. It measures 58 inches diagonally with a pixel resolution of 2560x1080, perfect for displaying movies without the hated letterbox bars. The prototype uses CCFL backlighting, but the final version could use LEDs. I was told it could become an actual product by the third quarter of this year and that it would be "Vizio priced."
Thin was definitely in at Vizio, which showed several super-slim LCD TVs with LED edge-lighting as a concept demo. The 42-inch Blade seen here in profile is only 6.8mm (1/4-inch) thick, making it the thinnest flat panel I've seen at the show so far, with the electronics in an outboard box. The 26-inch version is 1/2-inch thick with the electronics in the base.
Vizio is getting on the widget bandwagon with Vizio Connected HDTV, a feature set that will be added to all XVT models this fall. With 802.11n WiFi and an Ethernet port, it can run various widgets to access online weather, news, and so on, and new widgets can be downloaded from the company's website into the TV's Widget Gallery shown here on the left of the screen. Also included is a new Bluetooth remote that slides open like a smartphone to reveal a QWERTY keyboard.