The Digital Video Editing website has two articles about notable things from the NAB show. There’s lots of HD stuff going on this year - Apple called it first!

Link: Digital Video Editing - NAB Notables
Link: Digital Video Editing - NAB Notables, Episode 2

Sony is continuing their Qualia line of high quality components with the introduction of the Qualia 002 HDV Camcorder. It offers 1080i resolution at 1440 x 1080, interlaced. It comes with Carl Zeiss lens, an enhanced microphone, and a 16×9 LCD display. It will sell for about $5800.

Link: eCoustics

Panasonic has a new camera on the horizon: AG-HVX200.

With many available HD modes: 1080/60i, 1080/24p, 1080/30p, 720/60p, 720/24p, 720/30p and some expected SD modes: 480/60i, 480/24p, 480/30p, this thing sure does look impressive!

I’m looking forward to getting more details on this one…

Rm.

According to LG Electronics, more digital televisions will be sold this year than analog ones. We knew this day was coming…

Link: Reuters - More Digital TVs Seen Sold Than Analog in ‘05

[Update: everyone’s talking about this here, here , and here. Makes me wonder if a compromise really will be reached. I just hope that Blu-ray’s higher capacity gets to stay in any combined format.]

All the recent Blu-ray vs HD DVD news has pointed towards a lack of agreement between Sony and Toshiba on unifying their formats. But according to The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, they are already working on the project. This contradicts what other sources have said, so the waiting game continues…

Link: Reuters UK

ultimate AV has experimented with receiving over-the-air HDTV signals and wrote up an article about their experimenting.

Link: ultimate AV - There’s HDTV in Them Thar Hills

I have owned a HDTV for over half a year now. I know, I know, that’s not all that long when compared to some of the early adopters. But a year ago I never imagined that I’d be watching programs in HD today on a Hitachi HD RPTV. I really like my television, a Hitachi 57T500. I did quite a lot of research and shopping, and I think I bought one of the better CRT RPTVs out there. However, there were definitely things that annoyed me about my first RPTV experience, the main one being internal reflections. This is a problem common to all RPTVs but it’s really quite annoying.

Another problem I had was calibrating the set. I haven’t yet done an ISF calibration, but even calibrating the set using AVIA was a problem. For example, it would say to adjust the set until blooming. I didn’t get blooming, so I had problems figuring out where to set the parameter.

That said, I decided to create a list of all the attributes a perfect RPTV would have. Lots of these attributes could be shared with a direct-view or front-projection display, but I wanted to make the list comprehensive. I will be updating this list as I think of more things.

Warner Brothers is collaborating with Microsoft on retail releases of HD movies and TV programs. Warner Bros. will make it’s HD DVD content using Microsoft’s Windows Media Video 9. (WMV9 has been standardized with SMTPE under the name VC-1, which is also part of the Blu-ray specification.) Warner Bros. plans to release a wide range of VC-1 titles. HD DVD also supports MPEG4 and MPEG2, as does Blu-ray. The fact that Warner Bros. chose to use Microsoft’s technology is a great boost to Microsoft.

Link: Reuters - Warner Bros., Microsoft Team on High-Def Format

VC-1 is gaining broad industry acceptance, according to Microsoft. VC-1 is not only being used by Warner Brothers for their HD content, but for digital broadcast, Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), and satellite networks.

Link: Microsoft - VC-1 Powering the HD Revolution
Link: Last Mile

PC ADVISOR claims that even though it sounds like Sony wants to make compromises to create a unified blue laser disc format, in reality they have no such intention. It does make sense. If Sony really wanted a compromise, why didn’t they say that earlier? MUCH earlier? On the eve of the HD DVD format launch (it’s only half a year away or so!) Sony says that it’s willing to compromise. That doesn’t leave much time.

Link: PC ADVISOR - Compromise unlikely in HD optical disc battle

Sonic Solutions has announced the world’s first HD DVD authoring program, called Scenarist HD. Sonic Solutions also announced a Blu-ray authoring program called Sonic Blu-ray Creator.

Link: TMCnet - Sonic Debuts Scenarist HD
Link: Yahoo! - Sonic Introduces Blu-ray Creator

Dolby Digital Plus and MLP Lossless have been selected as optional audio codecs by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). DD+ is a format allowing for up to 12.2 channels of audio, and MLP Lossless allows for all the original audio content to be stored, with nothing taken away. I’ve been waiting for this announcement for some time and I’m glad that the BDA has made these formats available to Blu-ray content creators. I’m hoping that 7.1 audio for movies and lossless encoding of music become standard offerings on BD discs.

Link: Yahoo! DD+ and MLP Losless Selected by BDA

ultimate AV has a review of the Sharp XV-Z2000 DLP Projector.

Link: ultimate AV - Sharp XV-Z2000

Corporate Media News goes into details about Sony’s new HVR-Z1U HDV camera. The Z1 records in 1080i using 3 CCDs. It records in HDV or standard DV modes and uses MiniDV or DVCam.

Link: Corporate Media News

audio|video Revolution has a review of Dish’s HD 921 PVR/satellite receiver.

Link: audio|video Revolution - Dish 921

PhysOrg.com mentions JVC’s latest 52″ and 61″ RPTVs featuring their D-ILA technology.

Link: PhysOrg.com - JVC

engadget seems to like the Panasonic’s new HD camcorder, saying it one-ups Sony’s HDR-FX1 by supporting 24fps progressive recording. It records to MiniDV tapes, but also to P2 solid state flash memory cards.

Link: engadget - Panasonic AG-HVX200
Link: LetsGoDigital

engadget also mentions that WinBook is getting into the increasingly-crowded LCD TV market.

Link: engadget - WinBook LCD

Home Theater Magazine has reviews of the ViewSonic N3200W LCD HD Monitor and the Samsung LTP468W LCD HDTV and the Hitachi 32HDL51 LCD HDTV. Whew!

Link: Home Theater Magazine - ViewSonic N3200W
Link: Home Theater Magazine - Samsung LTP468W
Link: Home Theater Magazine - Hitachi 32HDL51

In January at Macword Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs declared 2005 the year of HD.

At NAB April 17th Apple continued to show this to be true.

Apple announced additional HD support in their Final Cut Pro 5 and DVD Studio Pro 4 products. DVD Studio Pro will now let you create and burn HD content onto DVDs. Apple’s Shoeben thinks that we’ve reached the inflection point in the move to HD - when momentum starts to carry the HD movement forward.

Link: Macworld
Link: News.com
Link: Apple - DVD Studio Pro 4

Stephen Speicher, in his lastest The Clicker column, analyzes the CableCARD situation. If you don’t already know, CableCARD is a standard that DTV manufacturers are starting to adopt that allows you to buy an DTV set and watch DTV content from your cable company without the need for a set-top box. You may remember a long time ago, before cable TV was supported by televisions, that people would buy external boxes to switch between cable channels. I remember being at a friend’s house thinking it was the coolest thing, because it was just a little box with a bunch of direct-access buttons for choosing the cable TV channel you wanted. Well, we’re currently in the equivalent stage in the DTV transition, but CableCARD is there to bring us through.

Many HDTVs are starting to appear with CableCARD slots, and it was something I was looking for last year when shopping for an HDTV. Unfortunately at the time, CableCARD seemed to be coming out in the generation of TVs AFTER the generation I wanted to buy in. But that was then - now there are many HDTVs with CableCARD as an option.

But there’s a problem with CableCARD - it’s unidirectional. One way traffic only. So if you want to order a Video-On-Demand or Pay-Per-View movie, you’re out of luck. So the next generation of CableCARD is being worked on too. Another problem is that your cable provider actually has to support the CableCARD standard before it becomes usefull to you. And another problem…. well, just read the articles below.

Link: engadget - The Clicker - CableCARD and OpenCable
Link: Thomas Hawk discusses above article

Onkyo is putting its feet firmly in both camps with the announcement that they’re joining the Blu-ray Disc Association.

Link: Gizmodo
Link: Onkyo Press Release (Japanese)

Vidikron’s Vision Model 100 is geared for rooms with more than just a small amount of ambient light. It’s a 3-chip DLP design, so it doesn’t suffer from the rainbow effect that bothers some viewers of single-chip DLP designs. It puts out 3500 ANSI Lumens of light yet maintains a contract ratio of 2000:1. It has a resolution of 1280×720, like most home theater DLP designs, and can be configured with one of six lenses. MSRP is $29,995.

Link: Widescreen Review - Vidikron
Link: Vidikron Vision Model 100 Product Page

If you have several HDMI components that you need to switch, take a look at Gefen. They have three models, ranging from a model with 2 inputs / 2 outputs up to a model with 6 inputs / 2 outputs.

Link: Widescreen Review - Gefen
Link: Gefen

Projector Central reviews the Canon Realis SX50, a 1400×1050 LCOS projector for about $5000. That’s quite a price for such a high resolution projector, and the unit is rated at 2500 Lumens of light output.

Link: Projector Central - Canon Realis SX50 Review

Pioneer is offering a set-top box for over-the-air HDTV called the SH-DT500. It doesn’t offer any digital video output (no DVI, HDMI, or Firewire), nor does it offer a PVR. The price is set at $799.

Link: Herald Sun

One of the movies Prodigem offers as a bit torrent download is HD. The movie is a documentary called “On Our Way Up”. As HD becomes more and more popular in the living room, it will become more popular at the computer as well.

Link: Yahoo News