During a gala event last night at Ken Cranes Home Entertainment on the tony west side of Los Angeles, LG Electronics hosted the launch of its long-awaited 71-inch plasma display, the MW-71PY10. As the press handout states, it's the first plasma you can speak of in feet, not inches (they should have made it an even six feet—what's an itty bitty inch among friends).

As the old saying goes, what if they started a war and nobody came? That seems to be the case with the simmering format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. To the consumer who bothers to keep up on developments, it must look like a phony war.

Pioneer's newest flagship 50-inch plasma display differs from its predecessors, including the <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/flatpaneldisplays/405pioneer/ "> Elite Pro-1120HD</A>, in a number of important ways. For the buyer, however, the most important change is the price. At $5500, the Elite PRO-1130HD is a whopping $8000 cheaper than the $13,500 PRO-1120HD we reviewed back in April 2005. The fact that the PRO-1130HD is also better than last year's model illustrates just how competitive flat panel sales have become. Pioneer has had to dance as fast as it can to keep up with the major players in the market.

Last time I mentioned a letter from a reader asking me to recommend great movie theaters he should check out on a visit to Los Angeles. I also suggested that out-of-towners visiting The Big Orange for our upcoming Home Entertainment 2006 show on June 2-4 (you are coming, right?) might want to include a visit to one or more of the best theaters in the world in their plans&mdash;particularly if they're from a theater-challenged part of the country. There are new multiplexes in LA <I>suburbs</I>, for example, that are likely better than any movie theater in the entire state of New Mexico (I know from experience, having lived in Santa Fe for 10 years and visited most of the theaters there and in nearby Albuquerque, the state's biggest city by far).