Shane Buettner posted a Blog late last night about Pioneer's new technology, designed for richer colors, good performance in various lighting environments, deeper blacks, improved video processing, and smooth handling of motion. At the press conference, they announced that new Pioneer plasma designs (42", 50" and 60") incorporating these improvements will appear in stores in Summer 2007. Photos were not available (the photo printed here is of the current model, and odds are it will look similar). And since no specific mention was made of the Elite line, presumably the technology will be made available in all Pioneer models.

Algolith's Mosquito is an outboard video noise reduction device that Algolith describes as an "analog and digital compression artifact reducer." At $3000, it may be the most expensive device of its kind offered to consumers. It may also be the most sophisticated. If you judge your audio-video components by weight, it won't make much of an impact. But weight has little to do with the performance of this sort of product.

For a relatively new brand, Olevia has made a fast start. When I attended the launch of its new assembly plant in Ontario California recently, I was impressed by the efficiency of the operation, not to mention the gutsy move to open an assembly plant in the continental U.S. rather than, say, just across the border in Mexico. This says a lot about the confidence that Olevia, and its parent company Syntax-Brillian Corporation, has about its future.

This action thriller may deepen the paranoid fever dreams of those who imagine that the feds are watching, listening-in on, and recording every aspect of their routine lives. But for those of us who know better, it's nevertheless an entertaining action thriller that moves along at a heady pace and is populated by a superb cast.