THE FRONT LINE: SEPTEMBER 18, 2006
CEDIA EXPO 2006: A Review
If you haven’t been to Cedia Expo in a few years, you’re in for a surprise — it’s more like a mini-Consumer Electronics Show these days.
Cedia Expo used to be the penultimate home theater custom design and installation trade show. Back when I first attended in 1996, it was all about expensive projectors, speakers, and amplifiers, top-of-the-line screens, complex programming systems, extensive theater treatments, and luxury seating.
Fast-forward a decade, and there’s still plenty of expensive furniture, speakers, and audio systems to be seen. But the bottom has fallen out of the projection and large screen display market, as Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese manufacturers ramp up mass production and fight a never-ending price and market share battle.
The result? Plenty of plasma, LCD, microdisplay rear-projection, and front projection products that are no longer Cedia channel products, but Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, and Wal-Mart products. In fact, there was so much of this stuff in the Denver Convention Center that it really did feel like CES — or, at the least, InfoComm.
NOTABLE PRODUCTS
This year’s show continued to surprise me, day after day. To be sure, I had expected to see numerous 1080p front projectors, all with high price tags. But I only got the first part right. The fact is, you will be able shortly to buy a full 1920x1080 projector for your home theater for less than $5,000.
Read it again. 1920x1080 front projection for under $5,000! To be more specific, Mitsubishi’s HC5000BL projector, which uses three 1920x1080 Epson HTPS LCD panels and Mitsubishi’s advanced color management, will set you back all of $4,500. (And that’s just the MSRP.)
Figure 1. Mitsubishi turned plenty of heads with their $4,500 HC5000 1080p LCD projector.
Figure 2. Panasonic’s PT-AE1000U wasn’t working, just out for display.
But it disappeared from the Panasonic booth after Day 1! Hmmm…
Sony’s new VPL-VW50, a UHP-lamped 1920x1080 SXRD product, will retail at $4,999. And it gets better, with Panasonic’s PT-AE1000U (three-panel LCD, under $6,000), Epson’s yet-unnamed three-panel LCD offering (also under $6,000), and JVC’s new 1080p D-ILA box (less than $8,000) coming to market.
Cinetron, a newcomer to the Cedia channel, had yet another LCOS 1080p projector on display at the Silicon Optix party, and it too will go out the door for less than $6,000. On the DLP side, BenQ showed the W1000, a single-chip unit with optional CinemaScope lens attachment for less than $8,000. Optoma’s 1080p HD81 with scaler will be competitive in that space.
There are still plenty of players in the high-end 1080p space. Projectiondesign had one of the best-looking 1080p demos at the show, featuring the Action! Model 3 1080. It uses dual lamps and seven-segment color wheels to develop as much as 2500 lumens for large screens, and sells for $15,995 alone, or $24,995 with the Crystalio II video scaler. I’m pretty sensitive to the segmented color wheel flicker artifact, but hardly noticed it this time.
Digital Projection, which OEMs some projectiondesign models, showed off their new Titan 1080p-250. It’s a 2000-lumens three-chip DLP model with high contrast and a 250-watt projection lamp. (No price given) Down the hall, Marantz rolled out the VP-11S1 ($19,999). It’s a single-chip unit with the latest Gennum GF9351 video processor chipset.
Optoma’s HD81, shown last year for the first time, is now a mature product and produces beautiful 1080p images with its Gennum-powered outboard scaler. In addition to LCD HDTVs, Sharp also brought along the XZV-Z20000, a single-chip 1080p model that is considerably cheaper at $11,999.
Figure 3. Optoma’s HD81 1080p DLP projector is ready for prime time,
and even had an anamorphic lens demonstration.
Figure 4. Cinetron’s sub-$6K 1080p LCOS prototype uses panels from
Taiwan fab eLCOS, and looked very impressive.
Speaking of image processing, Silicon Optix had a theme party showcasing numerous flat panel and projection products, all incorporating the Realta HQV or lower-cost Reon processors. Mitsubishi’s HC5000 uses one, as does Epson’s new 1080p projector and an impressive new product from Cinetron. This three-panel LCOS projector has 1920x1080 eLCOS panels and will eventually get to market at less than $6,000 (there’s that magic number again!).
The flat-panel LCD and plasma business was just as wacky as ever. Perhaps the most impressive announcements came from Sharp, who launched a 52-inch 1080p LCD HDTV for $4,800 MSRP (LC-52D62U) and a 42-inch 1920x1080p model for $2,495 (LC-42D62U). Their 46-inch model wasn’t too shabby, either, and will fetch $3,499 retail.
Sony, while not as aggressive as Sharp, had its own 52-inch LCD KDL-52XBR2 (from the S-LCD factory) out for view, and priced at $6,500. An XBR3 version with piano black gloss finish will come to market at $6,800. Down the hall, Hitachi showed a new 60-inch 1920x1080 plasma (a different cut for them) with no pricing, as well as a 42-inch full 1920x1080 plasma HDTV (also unpriced).
At the high end, Fujitsu unveiled their luxury Aviamo LCD and plasma HDTVs with price points of $7,000 for a 37-inch screen, $12,000 for a 50-incher, and $20,000 for a 65-inch model (basically Panasonic’s $10,000 product, re-badged).
Figure 5. Sharp had plenty of LCD glass, aggressive prices on 42, 46,
and 52 inch models, and some good-looking images in their booth.
Figure 6. Fujitsu remains one of the few companies that sell flat panels HDTVs
exclusively through custom installers. Their new Aviamo line is priced accordingly.
Samsung had a wide range of LCD HDTVs, including their version of the S-LCD 52-inch glass cut. The LN-S5296D is a 1920x1080 integrated HDTV with an extended wide color gamut backlight for $5,499, while the 46-inch LN-4696D with similar backlight will retail for $4,599.
40-inch and 46-inch sizes are becoming very popular these days, and JVC’s LT-40FN97 ($3,799) and LT-46FN97 ($4,099) will compete in that space. Mitsubishi is also OEMing LCD and has the 46-inch LT-46231 ($4,599) with their Full Spectrum Color processor. A lower-end version, the LT-46131, will sell for $4,199.
Toshiba unveiled two new large LCD HDTVs under their Cinema Series Pro Regza line. Both have gloss black finish and 12-bit processing. The 42-inch 42LZ196 will sell for $3,399, while the 47-inch 47LZ196 will roll out at $4,599. There were 21 different LCD models in the Toshiba booth, which should give you an inkling of the direction they’re taking with flat panel HDTVs.
Back on the plasma side, Pioneer announced three new PRO-series plasma sets, including a new 60-inch glass cut. The PRO-1540HD ($8,000) incorporates Pioneer’s First Surface Color Filter and Crystal Emissive Layer technology, as do the 50-inch PRO-1140HD ($5,500) and 42-inch PRO-940HD ($4,000).
Figure 7. Pioneer’s BDP-HD1 Blu-ray player can output 72Hz frame rates.
Figure 8. TiVo’s long-awaited Series 3 HD DVR has two CableCARD slots.
Prices continue to plummet in the RPTV market as everyone moves to larger screens and 1080p resolution. JVC had 56, 62, and 70-inch 1080p models ranging from $3,499 (HD-56FN97) to $5,799 (HD-70FH97), while Mitsubishi showed 1080p DLP designs from 52 inches (WD-52631, $2,799) to 73 inches (WD-73831, $6,499).
Down in the basement dungeon — uh, ballroom — NuVision had the revolutionary 52LEDLP, a single-chip 1080p DLP set with Luminus PhlatLight LED technology. It will come to market around $4,500. Samsung’s HL-5679W ($4,199) is a 56-inch 1080p DLP design that also uses the PhlatLight technology. It is shipping now.
While Samsung’s much-maligned BD-P1000 remains the only Blu-ray player in retail stores, Toshiba has already announced its 2nd generation HD DVD boxes. The HD-A2 will retail for the same $499 and is limited to 1080i output, but is much smaller and supposedly boots up faster. Its big brother, the HD-XA2, will come out at $999 and offer 1080p output.
Pioneer’s BDP-HD1 ($1,300) was on display and can play back blue laser discs with multiples of the 24 fps encoding rate — specifically, 72 Hz (3x). This is intended to be a Cedia channel product only, but it will show up in the big box stores pretty quickly.
There were many other products in the spotlight, including new scalers from DVDO (VP50, $2,999) with improved deinterlacing, along with Algolith’s Dragonfly ($2,995) that uses the latest Silicon Optix Realta 1080p processing. TiVo made a splash in the THX booth with their Series 3 HD DVR ($799), which can record both off-air (ATSC) and digital cable (QAM) HD programs. It comes with two CableCARD slots and dual tuners.
Figure 9. Algolith’s Dragonfly processor comes with Realta processing
and advanced MPEG noise reduction circuitry.
Figure 10. Samsung’s DTB-H260F was the lone new terrestrial DTV
set-top receiver to be seen anywhere at the show.
As for the DTV set-top business, there was little to be seen in Denver other than Samsung’s new DTB-H260F. This ATSC/QAM receiver will make its debut later this year and sell for less than $200. Presumably, it is using the latest (5th gen) 8VSB chipset. Back in the dungeon — uh, lower ballroom — Pro Brand showed the HD3150 Plus, a product that has been bouncing around Circuit City for a while at $230.
Still, I have to give one small company credit for being persistent: Terrestrial Digital, who is selling antennas for off-air DTV reception, had a nice sampling of screen antennas and yagis (mostly UHF), plus prototypes of some “smart” antenna designs. Winegard also had mast-mounted versions of their SharpShooter VHF/UHF antenna, originally an indoor design.
Regular readers know I’ve been advocating off-air DTV reception for several years — it’s free, and the image quality is usually much better than what you see from satellite and some cable channels. As more and more HD programming comes to broadcast stations — and cable rates continue to climb — maybe we’ll see an uptick in terrestrial DTV reception.
