THE FRONT LINE: SEPTEMBER 2008
CEDIA EXPO 2008
Editor’s note: Jeff covered CEDIA for us in 2007 and walked the aisles in Denver again this year for HDTVexpert.com.
Attendance at CEDIA 2008 may have been down (a reported 14% from last year) in what was clearly a sign of the economic times, yet several manufacturers still offered reasons to get excited about the future of the industry.
PROJECTORS
Several companies introduced new projectors, almost all of which offered 1080p resolution. A distinct exception was JVC professional’s 4096x2400 native DLA-SH4K, using JVC’s industry smallest 1.27-inch 4K imaging devices and exhibited off the show floor in JVC Professional’s D-ILA theatre.
JVC also introduced two less exclusive but still THX-certified front projectors, the DLA-HD350 and DLA-HD750 (to be sold by JVC Professional as the DLA-RS10 and DLA-RS20, respectively). They will be available in November for $6,000 and $8,000.
Figure 1. JVC's DLA-RS10 (or consumer DLA-HD350) was just one of many projectors at CEDIA 2008 supporting an anamorphic lens option.
The PowerLite Pro Cinema 7500 UB becomes the new top of Epson’s home theatre line with several new features, including anamorphic scaling, color space selection, built-in ISF calibration tools, and a surprisingly high contrast ratio (particularly for LCD) of 75,000:1. It will be available in December for under $5,000.
The HC7000U is the flagship of Mitsubishi’s new Diamond projector series, leveraging Mitsubishi Digital Electronics’ higher-end rear-projection and LCD HDTV brand. At $3,995 and available this month, it will also feature high contrast (70,000:1) and HQV video processing.
Panasonic boasted about the new AE3000 at its Wednesday press conference, saying it would be available in October/November for $3,499. But surprisingly, it wasn’t being shown on the show floor, but rather only in an exclusive meeting room. That’s too bad for Panasonic, because the AE3000 was impressive with features like 60,000:1 dynamic contrast, 120 Hz frame rate with frame interpolation (including quadruple frames for 24p material), second-generation detail enhancement, and a lens memory feature that saves two positions for 16:9 and 2.35:1 viewing.
Interestingly, each of the aforementioned projectors, as well as several others on display, was shown with a Panamorph lens for “native” 2.35:1, expanding on the trend from last year’s show.
Also off the show floor, were two LED-powered 1080p DLP front projectors from Digital Projection and OEM supplier Chilin. Production models are as much as a year away, but these projectors boasted remarkable color accuracy and contrast.
Figure 2. Sharp's LED-backlit LC-65XS1U-S covers 150%
of the NTSC color gamut,
but is just 1 inch thick.
Figure 3. Hitachi's 1.5-inch thick plasma was just a prototype,
but it made plasma's future a little brighter.
LCD AND PLASMA HDTV
Both Sharp and Sony introduced new ultra-thin, LED backlit LCD TV series. Sharp’s 65- and 52-inch AQUOS claim to cover 150% of the NTSC color gamut with a dynamic contrast of 1,000,000:1. Going back to a separate AV module allows Sharp to get the panel down to just a one-inch thickness while still maintaining input flexibility with 5 HDMI inputs and component video.
Sony’s new 52-inch and 40-inch Bravia LCD TVs also feature LED backlights and are just 9.9mm thick. More uniquely, Sony has quadrupled the typical frame rate to 240Hz, interpolating as many as three frames to minimize motion blur. And Samsung followed last CEDIA’s LED-backlit LCD sets with the new, second-generation 950-series of LCD HDTVs.
While it was just a concept design prototype, the big plasma news was Hitachi’s stunningly elegant 1.5-inch thin PDP that matched the thinness of its now-shipping 1.5-inch thick LCD TVs. No availability or pricing information was yet available, but it’s probably safe to assume that the 50-inch model on display would be a premium model that will fit in at the top of Hitachi’s pricing scale (currently Hitachi’s 50-inch plasmas range from $2,199 to $3,199).
Figure 4. Anchor Bay's DVDO Edge brings a new price point to
high-performance video processing at $799.
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING
Anchor Bay added the Edge to its pro-level standalone DVDO iScan series of video processing engines. But at $799, it’s a much lower-priced alternative to the iScan models (with an HDMI hub built-in) that could introduce Anchor Bay to a much broader customer base. By up-converting SD, HD, and PC resolution inputs to 1080p and effectively taking the video processing part away from the HDTV, the Edge has the potential of making a very inexpensive display look like a premium product.
Several companies, including Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, and LG, introduced new Blu-ray Disc players with BD-Live functionality to allow the device to access web-based content via an Ethernet connection. LG went a step further by announcing a relationship with Netflix that would allow subscribers to stream HD movies over the web directly to their Blu-ray players.
Toshiba continues to leverage the video-processing and up-converting technology born from the ill-fated HD DVD format and it was on full display at CEDIA. Toshiba’s two new sub-brands, XDE and SRT, use essentially the same core up-converting technology, with XDE equipping Toshiba’s DVD players to output interpolated 1080p from DVDs and SRT building up-converting capabilities into the company’s latest LCD TVs.
And the long awaiting LaserVue TVs dominated Mitsubishi’s consumer booth. While not actually shipping yet, the word at the show was that they’d be available in October at $6,999 for a 65-inch set. That’s well down from the initial 5-digit pricing, but the question remains whether it will be low enough. While lasers allow the LaserVue to be fairly slim for an RPTV (10-inches), it will need to compete with the rapidly-falling prices of even-slimmer plasma and LCD HDTVs. — JV
