Scott Wilkinson

As with all things, Paradigm's Signature Series of flagship home-theater speakers have evolved. At CEDIA, we'll see the third generation of this impressive series, which boasts a 50-percent increase in output and extensive modifications to the bass/midrange drivers, including low-density NLC (Non-Limiting Corrugated) TPE surrounds, which are said to far more effective than standard thermoplastic elastomers at damping vibrations and resonances. Pricing ranges from $600 each for the S1 G-PAL bookshelf to $3500 each for the S8 floorstander and C5 center pictured above.

I recently posted an item in the Ultimate Gear blog about <A href="http://blog.ultimateavmag.com/ultimate-gear/nordost_odin_cables">Nordost Odin audio and power cables</A>, the company's flagship, ultra-expensive line. What do I mean by "ultra-expensive"? How about $20,000 for a 3-foot pair of speaker cables? As you might expect, this stimulated many contentious comments about whether or not such cables can possibly affect the sound enough to justify such an exorbitant price tag.

CEDIA Expo 2011 is history, but the memory lingers on. Many manufacturers go to great trouble and expense to dazzle showgoers with their booths, and I always photograph a few of the best ones as I wander the floor. My favorite this year was the Klipsch booth with its floating translucent columns encasing LEDs that provided an ever-changing light show. But it wasn't the only booth that caught my eye…

As far as I have understood up to now, a passive-3D LCD flat panel displays 3D Blu-ray images in the following manner—the odd-numbered lines of left-eye information are displayed in the odd-numbered lines on the screen, and the even-numbered lines of right-eye information are displayed in the screen's even-numbered lines. As a result, the TV simply discards the undisplayed lines and each eye sees a resolution of only 1920x540 pixels. However, the image on such TVs that I've seen looks sharper than this would seem to indicate, though I do normally see thin, black horizontal lines, especially if I'm too close to the screen. The explanation I've heard most often is that the brain fuses the two images into one 1920x1080 3D image, but LG tells a somewhat different story.