Tom Norton

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CES 2011
Mellow Yellow
Tom Norton  |  Jan 06, 2010  |  Published: Jan 07, 2010

Sharp's big announcement, apart from listing of their new models, was Quad Pixel Technology. Instead of the usual red, green, and blue sub-pixels that make up each pixel in the LCD image, Sharp adds a fourth, yellow-filtered sub-pixel. This is said to increase the number of colors up to 1 trillion. But who's counting?

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CES 2009
Meridian Projector
Tom Norton  |  Jan 11, 2009
We've seen the Meridian 810 Reference Video System before; it's the first 4K x 2K video projector available to the consumer. It won't come cheap a just a few thou south of $190,000 for the projector, video processor (needed to scale available 1920x1080 material up to 4800 x 2400. It looked fabulous, even though even better images are possible from it with native 4K program material (essentially non-existent to you and me). They had to settle for a 10' wide projection screen (a curved, 2.35:1, Stewart Studiotek 130), and were claiming 48 foot-Lamberts! Clearly the projector is intended for a much larger screen.
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Meridian-Faroudja
Tom Norton  |  May 12, 2007  |  Published: May 13, 2007

Back on the limited home theater front, Meridian/Faroudja had a small room with both audio and video, the latter a modest flat panel display. The heart of the audio system was the new Meridian G95 ($8495), a complete processor/amp/DVD player all in one case; in other words, it's a high-end DVD AV receiver, offering five channels of 100Wpc amplification. But it does have limitations, which are rather surprising for such an expensive device. There is no DVD-Audio playback (Meridian has long been a champion of that format), and no way to get an external multichannel source into the receiver (there is no multichannel analog input and no HDMI switching to provide multichannel audio on HDMI). The only HDMI connection is the HDMI output for the internal DVD player.

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CES 2012
Merrill-Williams Disc Spinner
Tom Norton  |  Jan 13, 2012
Vinyl is big lately in high-end audio so I had to include at least one turntable or risk appearing hopelessly out of date. It's the Merrill-Williams Audio table that worked so well in the Wharfedale system above. If $7200 sounds steep, you don't get out much; you can spend a lot more for a turntable. And oh, by the way, that price does not include either the Dynavector tonearm ($5000) or the Ortofon Anna cartridge that was used with it here ($8500). That's right, the cartridge costs more than the turntable—and more than a good high end surround preamp processor (I had to throw that in!). But if you want to get into vinyl and this is your first exposure to its potential prices, you can do so for a lot less than this.
CES 2009
Miles of Aisles
Tom Norton  |  Jan 10, 2009
The bottom floor of the Hilton Hotel's convention center (adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center) is home to hundreds of small stands hawking every description of small electronic thingamajig, most of them representing small Chinese companies. I searched out two of them, only to find that they didn't market anything like what I expected to find: speakers (Dayton) and projectors (Sharpvision).
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CEDIA 2011
Mitsubishi
Tom Norton  |  Sep 08, 2011
But for me, projectors were the main attractions in the Mitsubishi booth. The currently available HC9000D LCOS design (2D and 3D, $6000) looked fabulous in 2D (it was not being demonstrated in 3D when I was there). I was surprised, in fact, at how bright it looked on its 143-inch diagonal, 16:9, Stewart Studiotek 130 screen (gain 1.3).

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CEDIA 2010
Mitsubishi 3D
Tom Norton  |  Sep 26, 2010
Mitsubishi's Diamond 3D prototype was being shown on an 107-inch wide, 2.1 gain Draper screen. Without the 3D glasses in place, the image was very bright. With them on, it was unacceptably dim. More work is still underway on this design (including the 3D glasses; Panasonic glasses were used in the demo). Photo courtesy of Scot Wilkinson of www.ultimateavmag.com.
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CEDIA 2012
Mitsubishi 8000
Tom Norton  |  Sep 07, 2012
The new Mitsubishi single-chip DLP 3D projector offers a 6X color wheel, uses active glasses, and should be available in October at $3000.
CEDIA 2011
Mitsubishi Booth
Tom Norton  |  Sep 08, 2011
Mitsubishi has been busy this year. First was its 92", DLP rear projection set shown at last January's CES. Now they've also re-launched their Laserview RPTV—the $6000, 75", 16" deep, L75A94. I don't think the latter was being shown to best advantage, located as seen in the photo (the set against the wall on the left is the 92" DLP, the Laserview is further to the right, in the upper center of the shot), but it will be interesting to see if MItsubish can make more of a go of it than the first time it was launched several years ago.
Mitsubishi Diamond
Tom Norton  |  Sep 05, 2008
Mitsubishi's new HC7000 projector is a lot sharper looking than this artistic photo might suggest. (OK, the artsy look was an accident; it's hard to get a clean shot when the subject is rotating around behind glass). Said to offer an ANSI contrast ratio of 1000:1 and a peak contrast of 72,000:1. $3995, in mid to late October.
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