Tom Norton

My rounds at the high-end audio exhibits at the Venetian Hotel only let me sample a few rooms that looked interesting, or appeared to have some semblance of relevance to both music <I>and</I> home theater. But If I diverge a bit from the home theater tack in a one or two of the following entries, well, it's stuff I found interesting.

Here are the beryllium cone drivers seen in the new, $50,000/pair 8T speakers from Status Acoustics and described elsewhere here.

An ambitious Chinese manufacturer of LCD sets, that's who. The small booth had demos 3D sets and an innovative 21:9 flat panel set optimized for 2.35: 1 movies—with black windowbox" bars at the sides for 16:9 material. Reportedly, TCL makes sets for VIZIO, which makes sense seeing that VIZIO is nearly set to release 21:9 sets. The only puzzle here remains why my camera rendered the TCL logo on top a red-fringed yellow, when the sign was clearly solid red.

If I had to pick a single obvious trend at this year's CEDIA Expo, it would be 2.35:1 anamorphic projection using an add-on anamorphic lens. At least five lens manufacturers were showing product, and all but a few projector manufacturers were featuring some sort of 2.35:1 anamorphic projection. (The fact that our October 1008 issue, distributed at the show, featured an article on this type of setup was a happy coincidence).