Accessories / Audio / Displays / HDTV

Product Review: Accell 4×2 HDMI Switcher

- by Avi Greengart - 3 Comments.

HDMI was supposed to bring the home theater world from the confusing age of multiple cables for audio and video (and sometimes multiple audio cables and multiple video cables) down to just a single cable from each component to your display. If your display doesn’t have enough HDMI inputs for all your sources, you need an HDMI switcher or a receiver which has an HDMI switcher built in. Then you need an HDMI cable from the each source to the switcher or receiver, but just one from there to the display. Fortunately, even some budget receivers now have HDMI switching …

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Displays

Come on in, the 1080p water’s fine!

- by Avi Greengart - 2 Comments.

Evan Powell over at ProjectorCentral has a short article on the massive drop in 1080p projector prices and he notes that this, plus the end of the format war, makes now an ideal time to buy. He’s not kidding. In some cases prices on models introduced just four months ago have fallen by hundreds of dollars as newer models have hit the market. The price on the Panasonic PT-AE2000U I bought at the end of the year seems to be holding steady; I’m not sure whether that means there is higher demand for this model — certainly a possibility — …

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Uncategorized

HD-DVD is dead, but did Blu-ray win?

- by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

The quick post-mortem on HD-DVD: It was a better standard in almost every way but capacity (and double layer HD-DVD discs made even that a moot point). Blu-ray can be spectacular, but the specification is still evolving. HD-DVD died  because consumers bought more Blu-ray discs. Consumers bought more Blu-ray discs because there were more Blu-ray players sold. There were more Blu-ray players sold because most of those were Sony Playstation 3’s (PS3). Thus, Sony’s decision to include a Blu-ray player in the PS3 was the primary factor in the death of HD-DVD. That doesn’t mean Sony won. First, Jeremy Toeman …

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Industry

CES 2008: GizmodoGate

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

[Warning: rant coming] GizmodoGate really bothered me. I was at that Motorola press conference. This was Moto’s first time talking to press/analysts in the post-Zander era, and they kept starting and stopping and starting and stopping. It was annoying for me to watch, and very hard for them to tell a smooth story. If Gizmodo had characterized this as a prank gone badly wrong and apologized, it might have been forgivable (after all, some of us do have a sense of humor). Instead, Gizmodo’s unrepentent response left a really bad taste in my mouth. I’ve been a marketing professional in …

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Computing / Displays / DVD / HDTV / Industry

CES 2008: High Def Disc Format War Over, Thin TVs, and Steve Jobs

- by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Well, I’m back from Las Vegas, but my body is still on the wrong time zone. There were three main stories at this year’s CES: The death of HD-DVD. With Warner’s announcement that it will no longer sell HD-DVD movies, the high definition disc format war is effectively over with Blu-ray as the victor. Toshiba (one of HD-DVD’s primary backers) offered a weak reaction, saying that it is stunned and upset, but that HD-DVD has been declared dead before. That’s true, but formats are only as valuable as the content that they are tied to. With Warner gone, only Paramount …

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Displays / HDTV / Industry

RIP: First CRTs, now RPTVs

- by Avi Greengart - 3 Comments.

The AP is reporting that Sony is now exiting its "money losing" RPTV business  to focus exclusively on flat panel displays; Sony’s technologies of choice are LCD and OLED. (As an aside, I thought Sony’s TV business had finally pulled into the black after years of losses – the Playstation business was supporting everything else until the PS3, and then the situation reversed. I guess the flat panels were profitable but the big sets weren’t.) This is the second major television technology/form factor to get the boot – outside of mass merchandisers its pretty hard to find a CRT any …

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Uncategorized

Last Minute Holiday Gift Guide 2007

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

My "Last Minute Mostly Non-Obvious Tech Holiday Gift Guide" for 2007 has been posted over at LiveDigitally. (Also, AT&T Tech Channel interviewed me and pulled excerpts out into four video segments: 12/10/07 – Power, 12/12/07 – Web browsing and music, 12/14/07 For the videophile, and 12/17/07 – For the road warrior. A mirror of the text can also be found at Greengart.com.) Happy shopping, -avi

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Displays / HDTV

CES 2008: Vizio to launch 50″ 1080p plasma for $1499

- by Avi Greengart - 2 Comments.

Usually the invitations you get from PR firms are either a) inflated and non-specific or b) specific, but require a non-disclosure agreement. For an example of Type A: "come see how we will revolutionize the digital music industry." I actually got an invitation with this exact wording this year. Since it didn’t have any details or come from a company with even an outside shot at revolutionizing anything, it mostly served to amuse me for a second before I hit "delete." I can’t provide an example of Type B, for obvious reasons, but many vendors will give you a preview …

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Uncategorized

CES 2008: Do I Really Want to Know?

- by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

I’m setting up my CES 2008 schedule, and, as usual, my focus will be on mobile devices (my day job), not home theater. In addition to the usual press conferences and meetings, I’m moderating the CES GPS session this year. Still, some of the larger consumer electronics companies have product lines that span both mobile devices and home theater, so I often get a chance to see new displays, projectors, and sound systems while I’m at CES by default. Which brings me to Panasonic: I just realized that I happened to select Panasonic products for both of the new displays …

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Displays / HDTV

Front Projection: Decisions, Decisions

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Like most people setting up a home theater, my front projection choices are limited by room placement and budget. When review units come in, I typically set them up on a short table for as long as I have the device, but for my personal unit I want to ceiling mount it out of the way. My ceiling is extremely low (7′), so projectors with extreme offset angles (the image ends up projected several feet below the lens) – like some of Optoma’s recent DLP’s – simply won’t work. The new crop of budget LCD 1080p projectors look like good …

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