Shane Buettner

On the show floor Saturday I spotted industry veteran rep and all around good guy Phil Callahan, who was nursing a bruised ego due to the pounding Notre Dame was receiving from Michigan on the football field. Being the professional he is Phil sucked it up and introduced me to new-ish client Leon speakers and its main man Jeff Gordon (not that Jeff Gordon).

I finally made it over to Thiel’s live demonstration featuring the CS3.7 floorstanders with the just announced SCS4 bookshelf speakers pulling center channel and surround duties. And wouldn’t you know this was another one of the few places in the entire CEDIA Expo at which one could actually hear some music?

On Saturday afternoon I made it to an off-site hotel suite to get a sneak peak at prototypes of two of SIM2’s new 1080p DLP projectors with Greg Nicoloso of SIM2 and .Gordeon Sell PR’s Raney Nelson. Fired up at the suite were a Domino single-chip 1080p DLP targeted to sell at around $10K in November, and the HT5000 ($50K, available in November), which is the big dog, three-chip 1080p DLP with an eye-searing 4000-lumen rated light output.

I know- that’s a badly overused pun. But at the insistence of editor Tom Norton and contributing writer/reviewer Randy Tomlinson I found Revel’s off-site demo of its new Salon2 loudspeaker, which is targeted to come it at around $22K/pr. And will be joined in the Ultima line by matched center and surround speakers.