Well since I’ve been back from CEDIA USA in Denver I’ve been very, very busy so not much time to put down my thoughts. So today I have some spare moments and I thought I might as well give you a British perspective on what was there.
For the last three years CEDIA has been at Indianapolis but this year it was in Denver. I have to say, I prefer Denver. Although I preferred our accommodation in Indy….but that’s not why we went. We went to see all that is new and exciting in AV Land. No doubt some of you have followed the day to day reports on AVS forum, I know I did. I find it quite amazing how many folk can view the same thing yet have a completely different experience. Let me start by reminding everyone that I am the distributor for Lumagen in UK. What I will report is what I saw. I do not have daggers out for anyone and I hope folk can understand that I am honest in my comments of what I see.
Read on.
Denver convention centre is much like any other but they do have nice touches like the statues all over the place. This small one out front was pretty cool.
The first port of call when we got our passes was to nip in to the portable HD-DVD show across the street. I won an HD-DVD…disc, not player though. They had one of the best images of show in there. They had a demo disc playing on a rear pro tv and it looked mental. I suspect this demo disc was made to the very, very highest standards as the KingKong trailer they showed has never ever looked so good to me. Possibly the more interesting thing for man of use was this though.
Back over to the show and we had a wander. I can’t remember the exact routes so I’ll just comment on things I now remember.
Pioneer: Stand had the 5000ex and the Elite version playing. Amazingly there were people beside me asking each other if they new when the 1080p panels would be out or shown…they obviously couldn’t see any benefit of the extra pixels on the one they were looking directly at…..or perhaps they couldn’t actually see the sign that said in big letters 1080P….which could explain a lot hahahaha….
Thought that they looked nice, as did the new 7th gen units. As is usually the case with these things they play very specific content to make sure you don’t see any possible issues with the panels. Which is fair enough. Good stand though.
Panasonic had their 1080P 65” unit on show but no sign of a 50 that I could see. It is imminent though I believe. Panasonic were showing their own BluRay player as well. Now I am not sure if it was actually BluRay disc they were playing on the panels or if it was a BluRay advert fed of something else. The reason being this was the only BluRay demo that I thought looked good. Everywhere else I saw BluRay it looked really bad. Very noisy backgrounds making everything look nasty and processed. Here it looked good…very weird.
Over at Fujitsu they had their 1080p panels. Yes, that’s right…remember how we were told that there is no point in 1080p panels at 50” or below..well have a look at this.
Image quality was as you’d expect. Pretty nice. However, I have to say that whereas the current range are very sexy, these fall in to the Volvo design. What are they thinking…Here’s a closer look at the little one which I think is actually an lcd…Perhaps Graham can chime in and give us the scoop.
Over at Sony I only really was interested in the SXRD rear pro’s. COOL. And the new little Pearl. We went three times to see this thing. Once each day. Day one. They were showing bluray. Looked poor. Noisy nasty image. Put on some video source HD and it looked much better but soft. Next day we went back and they were showing the same and some other video source material and it looked very sharp and good. Then last day we went in again and they were showing BluRay Narnia clip. It showed a very significant Uniformity issue. That is to say that the bottom right quadrant of the screen, when showing snow, was pink. This is a shading issue and I’m sure it’s very fixeable but I was surprised no-one else seemed to be commenting on it as it was not insignificant. So from three short 5 minute stints with Pearl I have to say that it looks like it could be great…looking forward to playing with one very very soon.
While we’re on about Sony I should mention the HenryFu stand where they were doing G90 v Ruby. I’ve read the Art review of this and was surprised. When we went in they were playing out the last scene in Riddick. From what I saw for first 5 minutes I couldn’t see why anyone would buy a g90. In fact, I wondered why they were doing the demo. The Ruby had more detail and the contrast and punch was there a plenty. It looked nicer than the G90 physically. Then the credits came on and you could see the significantly darker blacks the G90 afforded. The demo was supposed to compare these two set up optimally so I asked why they weren’t using 48Hz to feed the Ruby. They got Roger Galvin to come and explain why. From what I remember of our conversation it went something like. Roger: “ 60Hz is optimal for that projector”
Me: “No it’s not, it will run at 48Hz genlocked from 60Hz film. You can set the scaler to do that. You’ll get much smoother motion image”
We then had a discussion about flicker and 50Hz and in the end it was obvious he was a CRT guy and had limited expereince of Ruby and Lumagens.
So while it was entertaining it wasn’t exactly both devices set up for optimal playback. I’m sure that Roger is no fool and that he did a top job on the G90 but on that showing, even with the Ruby not optimised, I wouldn’t have picked a G90 myself. Before everyone starts on about how black is much blacker with CRT I know, I saw it. I’ve seen it. I’m just telling you my thoughts from what I saw in that single demo.
MORE TO COME…..
Or were you referring to PJs. (BTW, I know you are under NDA...).
Big Smile 