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.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/107poty.1.jpg" WIDTH=250 HEIGHT=279 HSPACE=4 VSPACE=4 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT><I>UAV</I>'s annual Editor's Choice Awards have now morphed into the <I>Ultimate AV Top Ten Products of the Year</I>&mdash;our top choices in ten different categories for the products that impressed us the most this past year.

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.

The 1978 story of the comic hero Superman was far from the first live action realization of that character, but it has become a classic. Christopher Reeve, in the title role, was an appealing actor. While he was never a great one, he was a good choice for the Man of Steel. It's no accident that Brandon Routh, a Reeve near look-alike, was chosen for the lead role in the new Superman Returns.