HDTV – Page 4 – Devices View

Try It and You Won’t Go Back. (Or will you?)

October 26, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Jeremy Toeman over at LiveDigitally talks about the "living room effect" that can convince even the most hardened skeptic to make the move to HDTV. I’m a big proponent of experiencing products in order to understand their impact, but there are certain things that even a demo can’t cure. I find this uniquely interesting on a personal level because the "living room effect" hasn’t proven to be true here, at casa HomeTheaterView. I’ve had a 53" LCOS HDTV for 2+ years, but reception is over the air (when we get it – it can be flaky), and our ReplayTV is …

CEDIA Highlights, Part II

October 5, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

In last month’s CEDIA Highlights post, I noted two projectors that broke through the clutter (and there was a lot of clutter: my in box has dozens and dozens of press releases). There was a third announcement that caught my eye, and, surprisingly, it, too, was projector-related. THX is now certifying home projectors. On the surface, this does not seem surprising – THX certifies just about everything. In fact, don’t they already have a certification program for displays? It certainly seems like they did. (Actually, they did – but only as part of their commercial theater certification program.) THX is …

Displays / HDTV / Industry

CEDIA Highlights, Part I

September 15, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

To all the PR people trying to set up meetings with me at CEDIA this weekend: I’m not there. I just got back from CTIA before heading out again early next week, and CEDIA just didn’t make it onto the schedule this year. Of course, I’m following the show remotely. So far, only a couple of announcements have really broken through the clutter, and they’re two projectors that offer clear value propositions: Sony’s 1080p VPL-VW50 SXRD front projector, which brings essentially the same technology from the $25,000 Qualia line (that then showed up in the $10,000 VPL-VW100 front projector, and …

HDTV

LIVEDigitally Reviews Gefen Switcher

August 8, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I always wondered how well Gefen’s line of switchers would work in the real world. Gefen used to make switch boxes for the broadcast world which began finding their way into HDTV households as connectivity formats increased without a commesurate number of inputs on TVs or receivers. Lately, some of Gefen’s products have been picked up by home theater distributors, and Jeremey Toeman over at LIVEDigitally gives a 4 x 1 unit (4 HDMI inputs, 1 DVI output) a strong review. One side note: simple boxes that switch analog formats can be had for $29.99 at Radio Shack, so there’s …

DVD / HDTV

Samsung Blu-Ray Launch Did Not Impress

June 16, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I attended Samsung’s Blu-ray Disc player launch this evening at the Samsung Experience in New York and came away disappointed. There were several things wrong with the launch, starting with the fact that it was off by ten days (the players won’t actually be available for sale until the 25th): Samsung’s prepared remarks were overwraught, telling us over and over again how much we would be blown away by Blu-ray, and to prove this they showed a cheesy video and a few movie previews that, quite frankly, weren’t all that impressive on the pair of Samsung DLP TVs at the …

Displays / HDTV

Wired Offers Flat Panel Buying Advice

March 7, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Wired offers flat panel buying advice, and quotes yours truly about plasma burn-in and the analog TV reception at my in-laws house: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70349-0.html?tw=wn_index_2. A lot of that interview didn’t make it into the article. For example, the "gotchas" of buying a flat panel include: Not budgeting for a wall mount (which can cost up to $500 plus installation) Spending more to upgrade to a 1080p display (instead of 720p) in an environment where the extra resolution will not be visible (either because the user sits too far away for the eyes to resolve the added detail, or because most of …

Audio / DVD / HDTV / Industry

2005 In Review / CES 2006 Review, Pt. 4: Media Formats

January 16, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Part IV of my post-CES scribbles; each of the next few posts includes a quick look back on 2005 trends and a quick discussion of products introduced at CES 2006. This installment: Media Formats In 2005… The warring HD disc camps (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc) could not achieve compromise, but did not actually ship anything to the market, either. With nearly no support from content owners, SACD and DVD-Audio essentially died in 2005. At CES 2006… Toshiba hyped its first HD-DVD player at the modest price of only $499. In contrast, Pioneer announced a single Pioneer Elite Blu-Ray Disc player …

Accessories / HDTV

Product Review: Newpoint argo XL lifestyle antenna

December 21, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

The word "lifestyle" in this industry usually refers to speaker systems, designed to be as small and unobtrusive as possible. This often leads to poor sound quality – after all, physics are involved when pushing air, and its harder to do with less volume for the pushing. You can beat physics with unique designs like the tiny subs with huge excursion (from Definitive Technology and Sunfire, among others), or simply tune products to what consumers are looking for (bright and punchy) and forget absolute musical accuracy. Bose saw tremendous success getting way ahead of the lifestyle trend, but with general …

Computing / HDTV

The XP Media Center PC Experience

August 11, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 3 Comments.

This is the first in a series on experiences using and enhancing Windows XP Media Center for home theater. When I needed to upgrade my home office PC earlier this year, I chose to buy a Media Center PC because of the endless testing possibilities it offers. At the time, the Orb service, which lets you stream content from your PC to any Internet connected device, only worked on Media Center PCs (it still requires a PC with a TV tuner card to be compelling). Media Center extenders require a Media Center PC as a hub (though I currently use …

Displays / HDTV / Industry

Woot.com Sells $1.3 million in TVs over 22 Hours

August 9, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 2 Comments.

Woot.com has built on its relationship with InFocus and yesterday the one-item-per-day online outlet store flexed the power of its unique retail model: it sold out an allotment of 450 new (not refurbished) 61" ultrathin (6.85" deep) DLP RPTVs over 22 hours for $3000 each. InFocus sweetened the deal further with a $500 rebate. This TV typically cost $5,000 – $8,000, and includes 2 ATSC tuners, an NTSC tuner, a Windows CE-based web browser, and all the trimmings. With woot’s flat $5 shipping, this leads to some remarkable statistics: Item Quantity: 450 Item Price: $2,999.99 Total Sold: $1,349,995.50 Last Order …