Denver

September 16, 2006

Day Three of CEDIA

I had a chance to visit many of the booths that I hadn't hit the first two days. (Still, it would have taken at least three more days of speed walking and talking to cover all the booths in the Exhibit Hall.) My general impressions from the first two days remain – 1080 – p for popular. Though as I toured around, I found that most manufacturers do not have a full line of 1080p HDTVs in production. Often, like Panasonic, they will be showcasing one eye popping product, like Panny's 65" 1080p plasma. So don't expect to see a plethora of p's before the new year. And of course, you will probably have to pay a premium for them.

Out of all the beautiful images that I saw displayed on the myriad HDTVs in all the elegant booths, the simple representation, (showing at Sharp), of the eight generations of glass substrates fabricated for flat panel displays probably tells the history of HDTVs best. If you look down on the bottom left you will see the first generation 20" glass. The biggest demarcation is the size now being output from the new 8th-generation Kameyama No. 2 plant. Bigger glass means that more panels can be cut from one sheet, which lowers production costs.

Sharp 52" 1080p LCD, LC-52D62U

Which translates into 1080p LCDs hitting a price point that couldn't be possible with earlier generation glass. The Sharp 52" 1080p LCD, LC-52D62U, will be out in October with an MSRP of $4,799.99. Their 42" 1080p LCD model will be available in October for an MSRP of $2,499.99.

HDcodex DML-1600 standalone digital media player

Of course, CEDIA is not just about HDTVs. Aside from the 1080p projectors and $10,000 speakers trying to steal their share of the thunder, products like stand alone scalers and deinterlacers and media servers caught my attention. Hopefully, we will see a few of these HDTV solutions in our testing facility in the coming months.

Algolith Dragonfly Home Theater Processor/Scaler

Stay tuned,

Dick De Jong
Editor