Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
Pioneer launched a slew of HDTV and home entertainment gear this week, not the least of which being their 1080p switching Elite receiver series. Models VSX-80TXV, VSX-81TXV, VSX-82TXS, and VSX-84TXSi have 1, 2, 3, and 4 HDMI source ports, the top two models featuring a Genesis DCDi Faroudja video scaler, iPod
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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Laptops, Media PCs
Along with the 15.4-inch 5670 and 20.1-inch 9800 notebooks that we'd already known about, Acer formally unveiled at Computex two other HD-DVD- and Centrino Duo-toting models from the Aspire line that we hadn't seen before: the 17-inch 9510 and 15.4-inch 9110 (pictured). All four models are being billed as all-in-one multimedia centers, and with all but the 5670 sporting 1,920 x 1,080 resolutions, S/PDIF and HDCP-capable HDMI outputs, optional analog and DVB-T tuners, and of course those high-def, backwards-compatible optical drives (still waiting on those Blu-ray models, though), it sure sounds like Acer knows what it's talking about. Both of the new-new notebooks also offer up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM and nVidia graphics cards, but the 9510 rocks the GeForce Go 7900 GS with 512MB of RAM and up to 240GB of hard drive space, while the 9110 has to settle for the GeForce Go 7600 with 256MB of RAM and a HDD that maxes out at 120GB. Unfortunately, Acer was so busy selling us on the benefits of all these new machines that they forgot a few important details, so both pricing and release dates for each and every one remain a big fat mystery for now.Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Peripherals, Networking
to do all the hard work, AircordAV comes with a base unit that hooks up to any of your home theater gear using HDMI, DVI, component, S-video, composite, or SCART connections, and creates its own 802.11g network with up to eight clients feeding any or all of your video displays. Aircord claims the product is capable of lossless streaming, and uses a proprietary technology to encode and decode your video signals, although the company's lack of a website or actual product shots makes us a bit wary of the whole thing. We'll find out in December if this clever idea can be turned into a working device -- that's when the AircordAV will supposedly be released -- and if it can, expect to cough up at least $500 to start cutting those cords.
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
today up to twelve, because along with the seven BRAVIA LCDs we brought you just a little while ago, the company has also revealed five new rear projection models based on their Silicon Crystal Reflective Display (SXRD -- crystal becomes X-tal, get it?) technology. Each of these sets is part of the Grand WEGA line and features three SXRD chips along with the proprietary WEGA Engine HD and Digital Reality Creation Multi Function Version 2.5 systems, three HDMI inputs, and a full 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. The 70-inch, $7,800 KDS-R70XBR2 (pictured) and 60-inch, $5,300 KDS-R60XBR2 both trump the 60-inch, $4,500 KDS-60A2000, 55-inch, $4,000 KDS-55A2000, and 50-inch, $3,500 KDS-50A2000 by including native CableCARD support and integrated speakers, but the cheaper models will be available this summer, while you'll have to wait until fall to pick up either XBR set.Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
Filed under: HDTV
Samsung was in town (New York, that is) showing off some new TVs for the summer slump. We got a peek at ‘em, including their LN-S4696D, LN-S4096D, and LN-S3296D (priced at $4,000, $3,300, and $2,200), the 46, 40, and 32-inch versions of their 96 series of LCDs. The 40 and 46-inch models are 1080p sets, but all include USB
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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Media PCs
Add another item to the list of lustworthy products that are contingent upon the eventual (we think) release of Windows Vista: the Niveus Media Center Denali Edition featuring…wait for it…built-in CableCARD support. It’s not surprising that the manufacturer of such high-end HTPCs as the K2 would be chosen by Microsoft to debut the Windows-CableCARD integration, as Niveus’ products have always sported cutting-edge features like 1TB hard drives, multiple analog and digital tuners, and whatever Intel’s latest speed demon processor happens to be. Consumers who are willing to shell out the $6,000+ that this box will likely cost will become the proud owners of what HDBeat is calling “the ultimate HD machine,” because along with receiving HD programming over cable, they’ll also be able to watch high-def flicks thanks to the included HD-DVD drive. [Warning: .doc link]
[Via HDBeat]
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Filed under: Features, HDTV, Home Entertainment
In today’s How-To we get to play with other people’s toys. We upgraded a home theater to a high definition front projection system. We lay it out, set it up, drill holes, nearly die in a Texas attic, and bring home the popcorn.
Our project home theater already has the essentials for taking advantage of a high definition display: a progressive scan DVD player
Screen Selection
It may seem counter intuitive, but it’s helpful to consider (but not purchase) the screen before choosing a projector. Knowing the size of screen you want in your room will determine where the projector needs to be mounted, and how bright it needs to be. If you’re not sure, marking out the dimensions of the screen with some blue masking tape and checking out the view from your seating area can be helpful. Click on to read the rest of this week’s How-To!
It’s wise to consider the content you intend to view when choosing your screen. 16:9 (the ratio of width to height) is standard for HDTV content as you well know. The widest movies are presented in 2.35:1 format; standard definition television is 4:3. We’ve drawn these as constant height, just to give a rough idea of the differences. Check out the Letterbox and Widescreen Advocacy page for a great explanation.
After a few days of debating, the owner of our project theater determined that he wanted a 100 inch diagonal (49 x 87-inch) 16:9 screen.
The projector is the heart of any projection system. We selected the Panasonic’s PT-AE900U high contrast LCD projector. It displays 1280 x 720 resolution and has plenty of inputs (2 component, HDMI, VGA, S-video, etc.) and a great user reputation. The $400 rebate from Panasonic makes it even more attractive to the bargain hunting AV geek.
The screen size you want will determine how far away the projector needs to be mounted. This information is usually found in a table in the projector manual. Calling the manufacturer or downloading the manual is a good way to get this information. According to this table from the manual, the zoom range of the lens allows for a flexible 10 feet 2 inches, to 20 feet 4 inch distance from a 100 inch screen.
Before ordering your screen, we suggest getting your hands on the projector first to test out the size you’re considering with a temporary screen (aka bed sheet or wall), and the lighting conditions you intend to use it under. If you can’t put up curtains, a brighter room may call for a less reflective (lower gain) screen to get the best picture.
We finally settled on a Da-Lite Cinema Contour 16:9 100-inch diagonal wall mount screen. This screen has a gain of 1.3 (it will reflect 1.3 times more light than a standard white surface) and comes with a 3-inch wide matte black frame with permanent wall mount brackets.
It’s important to keep eye height in mind when mounting a screen. Have a seat and measure how high your eyes are as you look straight ahead.
Subtract 1/3 of the screen height from your eye height. That should be the height of the bottom of your screen. (Add the screen height to that to get the top of screen measurement.)
Mounting the Da-Lite screen is simple. We used 2 inch drywall screws to mount the upper and lower brackets. Once the first screw is in, use a bubble level to level the screen mount. Thanks to our stud finder, we managed to secure the brackets to three separate studs.
The screen fits over the top bracket, is centered, then the bottom of the frame just pops over the lower bracket for a nice clean installation.
Since the room is about seventeen feet deep, we decided to mount the projector on a shelf. A ceiling mount was an option, but the shelf was easier and cheaper to install for this project. The shelf was leveled and centered on the back wall four inches lower than the top of the screen. The Panasonic can be located off center, but keeping the image centered in the lens will produce the best image. It’s important to place the projector as parallel and level to the screen as possible.
Having attic or basement access to run your cables is a must if you want to hide you cables. Just remember that attic space in Texas gets seriously hot later in the day (as we found out). We pulled our cables from an access box near the equipment rack, through the attic, down to our freshly cut hole for the projector.
Once you have access into the wall and through the top or bottom of the stud wall, a wire snake is great for fishing access through the wall. For ease, we pulled a light nylon line through the wall and tied that to our bundle of cables to pull them through the wall down to the plate.
For the DVD player, we made a set of components; for the Satellite receiver, we purchased a 35 foot DVI to HDMI cable. Because the HDMI cable is so thick and lacks any method of securing the cable (dear HDMI designers: what the hell were you thinking?), we cut a new box hole directly behind the future location of the projectors HDMI port. We also pulled the power cable through the wall to the projector — it’s connected to a dedicated outlet installed in the attic.
We had problems getting a component cable in time for the install, so we tried making our own from shielded cat-5 and a set of RCA ends. It can be a challenge getting good solder type connectors, so we sacrificed a prebuilt cable to get a set of color coded, machine terminated connectors.
We used three pairs of the cat-5 for our component cables and left the shielding disconnected. Heat shrink tubing was used to insulate each connection as it was built, and the entire assembly was covered in heat shrink tubing to finish off each cable end. For ease, we finished the other end of the cable after we pulled it through the walls. The final cable performed just as well as our shorter cable, but we suspect a high end cable would provide slightly better video quality.
The adjustment joystick on the Panasonic could be smoother, but with the right touch, you can align the image pretty decently with it. The ring behind the lens zooms the image and rotating the lens itself focuses the image. We wish these controls were electronic, but once it’s set, you can forget about it.
Once the projector is connected, powered and aimed, take the time to calibrate it a bit. The AVIA Guide to Home Theater on DVD is an excellent tool for calibrating the video your projector displays. It’s a bit on the Mr. Rogers cheesy side, but it’s loaded with test patterns and tones for tuning your setup. Some of it is specific to the older CRT systems, but with it you can calibrate your video to meet NTSC standards. The colored filters (Gels) are used for blocking out the other colors so the levels of red, green and blue can be adjusted individually. Even with the great ratings of the Panasonic AE900U we used, it was very helpful for calibrating contrast and just a bit of color level tweaking.
Finished up, and tweaked with AVIA, we’re getting the popcorn and kickin back. It was a hit with everyone, even a uh, friendly scorpion (with claws and stinger) came by to check it out. We kid you not. Texas, man, Texas.
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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, HDTV, Home Entertainment, Peripherals
With more and more devices being released sporting HDMI outputs (although certainly not all of them), and your TV holding steady at just one HDMI input, you’re gonna have to shell out some loot for a switcher sooner or later. Most models on the market are dedicated little boxes that cost several hundred dollars, but cable manufacturer ACCELL has just announced a new solution for switching on the cheap, called the UltraAV HDMI 2-1 Audio/Video Switch, that tucks in unobtrusively among your nest of cables. This small wafer of a device simply features two inputs and an output, along with a handy IR repeater on a five-foot cord for toggling between sources from the included wireless remote. TMCnet is reporting that these will begin shipping next month, and for under a hundred bucks (well, only a penny under, but still).
[Via TMCnet]
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Filed under: Gaming, HDTV, Home Entertainment
If you've been holding off on ordering (or pre-ordering) an HD DVD or Blu-ray player because you're worried about Hollywood studios potentially using the Image Constraint Token to downgrade video quality displayed via analog outputs, you can cross that concern off of your list -- at least for the next four years. Though there's no official word, the major studios have apparently cut a backroom deal to keep their HD discs ICT-free until at least 2010. The move would allow owners of analog HD sets -- not to mention gamers who pick up Microsoft's Xbox 360 HD DVD drive or Sony's non-HDMI junior Playstation 3 -- to watch their discs in full HD format, rather than being forced to endure downgrades to 540p. Of course, even if the unconfirmed agreement exists, after 2010 all bets are off. But, by then, you will presumably be ready to pick up a new HD set (or Xbox 720 or PS4). And, if we're lucky, the format war may be over by then as well, so you'll actually be able to buy an HD disc player that will be useful for more than a few months. (And, no, that screenshot isn't from the HD DVD version of "Blazing Saddles" -- though the fact that the movie is now out on HD DVD gives us at least one reason to consider picking up a player). Filed under: HDTV, Peripherals
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
Samsung has just upped the ante in its ongoing “anything-you-can-do-we-can-do-better” battle with LG. While LG’s most recent plasma and LCD TVs with built-in DVRs had hard drives that topped out at 250GB, Samsung’s new 42 and 50-inch Anyview models have 300GB of storage. Yeah, an extra 50GB is hardly a big deal (unless you run out of space while recording the season finale of “Lost,” that is). But it lets Samsung thumb its nose at its crosstown rival — for a few days at least. We have no doubt that LG will hit the market with a 500GB model very soon.
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Filed under: Gaming, HDTV, Home Entertainment
There were two things that we thought would be a lock for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 lineup last week at E3: their HD DVD drive (which they delivered on, insofar as a mockup can), and an accompanying HDMI cable for actually watching those movies without fear of the deadly image constraint token. We assumed the latter would actually make it to market first, being that there’s already an obviously pent up demand for a 360 HDMI cable, but we thought wrong — Microsoft announced no such thing. Then along comes Lik-Sang, claiming they’ve got the skinny on the “official” MS HDMI cable, which would also feature component HD, and Dolby 5.1. Now, what are the chances that this is actually the real deal and not just a product stub in anticipation of an accessory that may or may not yet actually exist? Probably pretty slim, but it is Lik-Sang, after all, and they’ve been known to raise a few eyebrows.
[Thanks, GhostDoggy]
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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Media PCs
We’ve become accustomed to seeing some good looking hard-drive video units from Korea’s TViX, and the company’s latest, the M-3100U, appears to be no exception. Besides having a sleek, HTPC-style case, the M-3100U can record video content from a TV, PC or just about any analog source, and can save it in MPEG 1 or MPEG 2 formats. The box is also apparently capable of HD output at resolutions up to 1080i, though we assume that’s analog HD, given that this thing doesn’t have HDMI or DVI, but does have component outs. We somehow suspect that, if you want a similar box with real digital HD, you’re probably better off seeing what you can get from your cable company or waiting for a TiVo
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Filed under: HDTV
to drop a good 50-inch HDTV like their KDE-W50A12U, which TrustedReviews took a look at and for whatever reason declared Sony's last plasma (which we thought was a misreported rumor refuted years ago). Still, the TV has as a native 1,366 x 768 pixel count with HDMI, component, and three SCART inputs, and a digital tuner to boot. But while TR seemed to think it was a great display, a 50-inch Sony TV that could run you as much as £4,500 (about $8,400 US) is becoming increasingly difficult to justify in the world of affordable home theater rigs that in their entirety wouldn't cost as much as this display alone.Filed under: HDTV
For those
patiently awaiting the release of the first LED backlit
HDTVs, your time draws near, friends. Step aside,
officially posted their HL-S5679W LED-backlit 1080p DLP HDTV, which should result in a 20,000 hour lifespan with faster
startups and even better color using the already infamous colormongering
4,000:1 contrast ratio picture, and Samsung’s DNIe Digital Natural Image Engine. Perhaps most surprisingly, however, is
the 56-incher can be found listed online for less than $4,000, even if it is still in “coming soon” status.
[Via HD Beat]
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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
HD Beat has the scoop
on an upcoming 42-inch plasma display from Hitachi that delivers a lot of features for its $2,500 price tag. The
42HDS69 accomplishes a native resolution of 1,080i through a rather strange pixel configuration of 1,024 x 1,080,
sports such viewing enhancements as an anti-reflective screen and ALiS pixel barrier minimization technology, and
features three each of component and HDMI inputs along with an optical audio out and CableCard support. No definitive
release date has been announced, but the ‘Beat reports that we can expect to see this model in stores
“soon.”
[Via HD
Beat]
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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment
2.0 port. The 32-inch
LCD-32HR100(S) and 27-inch LCD-27HR100(S) go for roughly $3500 and $3000 respectively, and look to be available now in
Japan.Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
and remote are perfect for getting all potato-like up on the couch. The PC
manages to eek out 500GB of S-ATA disk for hi-def recordings and such, up to 1GB DDR2 RAM, a DVD combo-drive, and SD
and xD picture card slots with direct-to-card MPEG-4 recordings -- all powered by a 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo T2300 CPU
and XP Home edition. The kit is also available with a 32-inch LCD (LD-32SP1) and PC sporting a terrestrial analog tuner
and 250MB of disk (PC-AX50M) all of which you can mix-n-match to your heart’s desire. No doubt, we like the
design, but these systems are kept out of the high-end game with their Intel graphics cards, LCD resolutions of just
1366 x 768, and lack of a Windows Media Center Edition install option. Expect these to hit shelves in Japan sometime in
May for an undisclosed price.Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
is finally available in stores -- and there are
even some discs out to play on it -- reviews are starting to trickle in, mainly from dedicated early adopters, who've
braved confused sales clerks, cumbersome boxes, and a remote with more options than Windows Vista, to try the
player themselves. We saw one of the first such reviews, from The Man Room,
yesterday. Now, we've had a chance to check out a few more (props to PC World's Martyn Williams, who not only got one
of Toshiba's Japanese HD-XA1 players to review, but even checked out the bundled Japanese films "Biohazard"
and "Moonlight Jellyfish"). If there's a consensus opinion, it's that HD DVD may be great for early adopters
and HD connoisseurs, but less discerning viewers may not see what the big deal is. As Ben Drawbaugh puts it on HDBeat:
"Bottom line is that HD-DVD is great, but will you notice? If you can't tell the difference between DVD's and HBO
HD than you might be just as well off with a upconverting DVD player. If you never noticed HBO-HD's cropped movies,
non-dynamic sound and compression artifacts you may be better off sticking with HBO-HD. If you do notice these
annoyances you won't be disappointed with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray."Filed under: HDTV
Filed under: HDTV
Dell’s
got a new 26-incher kicking around on their site, the W2607C, predecessor to their
standout figures in terms of specs and performance (600:1 contrast ratio, 500cd/m2 brightness, 1366 x 768 panel, 89
degree viewing angles), but this thing does have an integrated ATSC tuner, and a decidedly sizable amount of inputs for
its class. We’re talking three composite ins, two S-Video, two component, two analog coax, DVI, and VGA in a $1,049
panel (well, $1,199 MSRP, but you know Dell).
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Filed under: HDTV
