Thomas J. Norton

We've waited what seems like an eternity for a top performing Blu-ray Disc player to challenge the head start HD DVD seized when it hit stores this past spring. Blu-ray's launch was dampened by the format's first player being the underperforming and poorly reviewed Samsung BD-P1000, which shipped with an incorrect noise reduction chip setting that caused soft imagery but that has since been corrected by a firmware update (a <I>UAV</I> follow-up is pending).

The Sharp XV-Z20000 is the third 1080p single-chip DLP projector to pass through our doors. At $11,999 it bucks a growing trend to less expensive, high resolution projectors. But it's far lower in price than competitors such as the $20,000 <A HREF=" http://ultimateavmag.com/videoprojectors/506marantzvp11s1/"> Marantz VP-11S1</A> or SIM2's $15K <A HREF="http://www.ultimateavmag.com/firstlookvideoprojectors/506sim2ht3000/">
HT3000</A>. And it offers a lot for the money.

Panasonic has announced the PT-AE1000U, its first 1920x1080p LCD projector. Priced at $5,999 ($4,000 MAP- Minimum Advertised Price), the unit is said to offer features useful both to consumers and film production studios for use in production and post-production activities.

"The Cube" is the first stop in testing a B&O loudspeaker. At 12x12x13 meters it is the world's largest privately owned sound test room. It is not an anechoic chamber. Instead, B&O built a space large enough to use MLS measurements to a high degree of precision. MLS measures the speaker's response to an impulse. This result is then gated to eliminate the effect of the sound reflected off the walls. The reproduced and filtered impulse is then converted back to a frequency response (techies will recognize this as a Fourier transformation). The two walls of the chamber are damped, not to eliminate reflections but to speed up the time between impulses (a number of impulses are averaged for greater precision). The support structure shown here holds the loudspeaker (in the photo it's one of B&O's very tall, pencil-thin designs). The mike is visible in the distance. Measurements are made in 140 different directions.