Tom Norton

UltraLink has a solution for those long HDMI cable connections with this powered HDMI cable. It's equipped with an in-line transmitter at the source end and a receiver at the reception end. $1000 for a 100-foot run.

You'd never know it by looking at its clean, non-intimidating front panel, but the new Primare SPA22 integrated AV amp houses all the features of a sophisticated AV receiver (it's called an AV amp rather than an AV receiver because it dispenses with AM/FM tuners). Proprietary class D digital amplifiers provide 5 x 100Wpc of amplification, the unit sports HDMI 1.3 and full video switching, the video processing upconverts to a maximum of 1080p via HDMI, and DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD decoding is expected by the time the unit ships in December at an anticipated price somewhere south of $6000.

Panasonic launched its new flagship 4K Ultra HD sets, the 65-inch TC-65AX900 and the 85-inch TC-85AX850, at a press event in Los Angeles last Thursday. The two models are similar in many ways, including their Ultra HD capabilities, THX certification, HDMI 2.0, HDCP 2.2connectivity, and H.265 (HEVC) decoding, which is planned for upcoming 4K source material, but not yet universally used in the limited consumer 4K material presently available) The TVs also incorporate Panasonic’s quad-core, Pro5 processor for their “Beyond Smart” feature set.

There are, at present, two ways to view 2.35 movies on a 1920 x 1080 HD projector. First, you can tolerate the black bars on a 16:9 screen (or use a 2.35:1 screen and zoom the image out to let the black bars spill off the top and bottom). Second, you can use an anamorphic lens, together with video processing, on that same 2.35:1 screen. Engineers at Projectiondesign have a third way. Working with Texas Instruments, they have incorporated a 2538 x 1600 0.9"DLP chip into their new Avielo Optix SuperWide 235, a single-chip, 2-lamp, 2D digital projector. Using a 2538 x 1080 central area of this chip, they can project a 2.35:1 image onto the screen with 1080 pixels of vertical resolution.