Devices View

Vizio put out a press release a few months ago for two of its 42" LCD HDTVs, touting in the headline, that Vizio is, "ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING FLAT PANEL BRANDS IN THE U.S." On the surface of things, that’s not such a bold claim – after all, who the heck are these guys, anyway? They came from nowhere, so of course they’re growing quickly. When you sell nothing one year, and something the next, your growth rate looks fantastic. So, growth by itself is not necessarily a meaningful statistic. Perhaps all the newcomers, slapping a moniker onto an …

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 …

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 …