Randy Tomlinson

Bang & Olufsen is showing their latest plasma TV product—the Beovision 9, shown here with B&O NA President Kim Gravesen. On the surface, it appears to be just a good 50” plasma with unusually advanced styling, but underneath it’s really far more. B&O claims it’s run by the fastest picture engine in the world. Various parameters (black level, sharpness, white level, etc) are controlled dynamically to maintain an optimum picture regardless of source content. An integrated center channel speaker has an acoustic lens to provide extremely wide horizontal dispersion. Aside from these basics, the Beovision 9 also serves as a home cinema master fully integrating and controlling music files, photos, net radio, and other web media, plus controlling lights, screen, and drapes—all with one remote. An HD video output will drive a projector in a separate dedicated theater. Up to 10 Beolab speakers and 2 subwoofers can be connected simultaneously. It’s not cheap (about $20,000) but then it IS B&O.

Hitachi’s latest entry into the plasma wars is a mid-priced 50 inch model with 1280 x 1080i resolution and a retail price of only $2499. Though this set doesn’t have the full 1080p resolution of 2 million pixels, it does have 30% more than the 768 sets it competes with pricewise. The new cosmetics (thin black bezel, speakers at the bottom) look great. Their 42 and 55 inch models remain and there is a new and impressive 60 inch model.

Here’s an interesting demo showing the difference between 8-bit and 10-bit color (that's 10 bits per primary or 30 bits total). One of the Sony LCD sets was modified to operate at 10-bit while the other was stock. The whole point of the demo was to show the improvements possible with HDMI 1.3, which is required for 10-bit color to be delivered to the display. I expected and saw a much smoother grayscale without visible transitions, especially at the dark end and a complete elimination of false contouring. I didn’t expect the not so subtle difference in color. Though I was told the color space of set number 2 wasn’t altered and saturation was identical, each color appeared deeper and richer. 10-bit allows a far greater color depth and it shows. While a number of display technologies run at 10 bits or higher, there has never been a way to deliver that from the source, plus the source material (even HD-DVD and Blu-Ray and current video games) aren't 10 bit yet. The HDMI group is hoping that manufacturers will take advantage of 1.3's greatly increased capability and improve their sources accordingly.

JBL is showing their new cost-no-object Everest speaker system. This system has a virtually unmatched combination of high-end transparency and extreme dynamic range. The horn midrange covers from 700 Hz to 40KHz with less coloration and better transparency than I’ve ever heard from a horn transducer, thanks to newly developed Beryllium diaphragms. A horn super-tweeter increases dispersion in the extreme highs. With an efficiency of 118 db/1w/1m, the main horn operates at such a low power that distortion and dynamic compression never increase, even in high level listening. Touted as the finest speaker JBL has ever built, these $60,000 beauties, with their slightly retro look, are a fitting tribute to JBL’s 60th anniversary. Hopefully the technology will trickle down to more affordable home theater models.