Samsung is working hard to make sure that CRT remains a viable alternative to television shoppers. A promotional slideshow playing on a CRT display says it best: “The news of my demise is greatly exaggerated!”

Measuring 16 inches deep and weighing 120 pounds, Samsung’s new 30-inch screen slimmer CRT is still far too clunky to hang on a wall. But its $1,000 price tag beats many high-definition digital displays. Samsung’s 32-inch screen liquid crystal display, or LCD, television may be only 4 inches thick and 36 pounds, but it lists for more than twice as much, at $2,500.

Personally, I’m a big fan of CRT. My current big-screen television is a RPTV CRT (the Hitachi 57T500) and my previous television, still in use in the kids’ room, is a direct-view Sony 35″ XBR. Which, incidentally, is a really great television - even my grandmother noticed the nice picture quality. So it comes as no surprise to me that someone is trying to keep CRTs alive. They still produce the best looking picture. (I assume SED displays will give them a run for the money, but that’s yet to be seen.)

Link: MSNBC - Trying to save cathode-ray tube TVs

I’ve mentioned the Sony HDR-HC1 camera before here and here, but it seems to be such a great little camera, I had to mention that News.com has put up a review.

At about $1,750 online, it’s an expensive camcorder, but it’s the least expensive HD one available. But this camera doesn’t just do HD, it can record in SD as well. And it records both on MiniDV tapes, available everywhere.

But being on the bleeding edge does have problems:

You can edit it on a Mac or PC, but most HD-compatible editing programs are very expensive. (The exception is Apple’s iMovie HD, which costs $80 as part of a five-program package.) You can’t save your masterpiece to a tape, because who has a high-definition VCR? And you can’t burn it to a DVD, because high-definition DVD recorders are not yet here.

For the moment, then, there’s only one practical way to replay your life’s high-definition moments: by connecting the HC1 directly to your HDTV set.

Link: News.com - A look ahead at HDTV, shot by you

BenQ Canada has announced the DV3750, a 37″ LCD display, for the Canadian market. It has a great 8ms response time which should help for fast motion video. The sets has a claimed 500 nits brightness and 800:1 contrast ratio. The stated resolution is 1920 x 1080.

Included are 3 composite inputs (who still uses those?), 3 S-Video inputs, one component input, one VGA input, and one DVI/HDCP input. That DVI is not as good as HDMI, of course, but it’s acceptable.

According to BenQ, its Senseye digital enhancement technology, featured in the DV3750, “purges noise from image signals, restoring true colours, accurately displaying image details, and enhancing picture contrast and depth.”

Okay… I haven’t seen an HDTV purge anything before, but that sounds interesting.

The set will retail for $3,499 Cdn.

Link: marketnews.ca - BenQ Debuts 37’’ HD-Ready Widescreen LCD
Link: BenQ Canada - DV3750

telecom asia.net ponders whether or not HDTV broadcasts of the 2008 Olympics in Bejing will be available. China NetCom president Zhang Chunjiang says the the 2008 Olympics will be all about broadband, saying “Broadband Internet subscribers from various countries will be able to watch and experience the Games conveniently with richer means. This is of great significance to the IOC, the Olympic Games as well as the audience.”

The 2004 Olympics had some impressive HD coverage, so of course the question of HD will be foremost in many people’s minds when it comes to Olympics coverage. But “That puts pressure on China’s broadband infrastructure if it intends to offer broadband TV, says NetCom’s Zhang, as a single HD stream can eat up at least 12 Mbps of bandwidth.”

Irregardless of whether or not we’ll be able to get HD coverage online, lets hope that we’ll at least be able to get HD coverage through our local cable/satellite provider.

Link: telecomasia.net - Streaming HD broadband Olympics

If you’re a big The Rock fan, or a fan of DOOM, or just like watching pretty movie trailers, then you’ll be happy to know that an HD version of the upcoming DOOM movie is available in HD. It looks like a very dark movie, both literally and figuratively.

The movie reminds me a lot of Aliens, actually. A bunch of marines on an outpost tracking down an awesomely fearful killer creature. You know what I mean. Only this time there’s more people around.

Link: Eurogamer - High-Def DOOM movie trailer

Pixel Plus is a much-lauded Philips technology for making SD sources look great on HD displays. Most of our programming is still SD, and that it true for a great many HDTV owners. Pixel Plus 2 is Philips’ latest version of their technology, and it is included in Philips latest LCD displays, models 32/37/42 PF9830. They all offer HDMI, DVI-I, and component videos inputs. They also offer USB 2.0 and memory card support. The 32PF9830 has a resolution of 1366 x 768, and the 37PF9830 and 42PF9830 have 1920 x 1080 panels.

Philips remains one of a very few companies to successfully combine picture resolution enhancement with motion compensation, via the acclaimed Digital Natural Motion system which has also been comprehensively enhanced in five key areas to deliver even smoother moving images.

The increased processing power allows more detailed information to be captured when motion compensation is applied. By extending window detection, offering 2x faster horizontal and 4x faster vertical compensation plus a faster catch rate, motion appears both sharper and smoother. Motion estimation and compensation is also applied to colours to sharpen the image and reduce judder. Finally, the ‘Halo’ effect is reduced by the better application of motion estimation in more complex scenes.

Link: CYBERTHEATER.COM - Philips delivers new high-end LCD TV trio

Thinking way back, I seem to remember that “LSI” stands for “large scale integration”. Which means that the new chip Sanyo developed has lots of little things crammed onto it. And all those little things are related to getting HD-DVD, DVD, and CD. These things include an HD-DVD encoder/decoder circuits, DVD and CD encoder/decoder circuits, and a CPU. This LSI circuitry allows the playback and recording of HD-DVD, DVD, and CD.

In english, this means that Sanyo invented a chip that’ll make HD-DVD players easier and cheaper to make, which I guess is all we really need to know.

Link: TMCnet - SANYO Develops a Breakthrough LSI for HD DVD

Everyone loves plasma displays. They’re big, beautiful, and thin. And they cost less than comparably sized LCDs.

But one thing plasma can’t seem to shake is the idea that they are subject to image burn in. But according to the ISV, the effects are temporary. Not only that, but:

“Plasma televisions have long been the subject of misinformation in key performance areas that in our estimation matter most to consumers. The reality is that while other technologies continue to progress in terms of picture quality, plasma continues to deliver a crisp, clear picture that in dark or light settings provides great richness of detail and color,” O’Donnell said.

Link: Digital Home Canada - Plasma HDTV outperforms LCD and DLP says Imaging Science Foundation

The man’s getting older, but he can still make ‘em laugh every night on TV. Scratch that. Make that HDTV! The Late Show with David Letterman will be available in HD starting Monday August 29th.

The show is going on a two week vacation to help prepare for the switch to HD, and then it’s time to count the cracks on your crystal-clear HDTV display.

Link: Broadcasting & Cable - Letterman’s Pet Tricks To Go HD

H.264 is one of the formats that will be supported by BD (Blu-ray Disc) and HD-DVD as part of the MPEG4 AVC specification. As such, it is one of the formats that will come into play more and more. DirecTV has already said that it will start using MPEG4 for its HD services. DISH Network will be doing something similar, if I remember correctly.

the INQUIRER was curious about H.264, so decided to run some tests to see how well it plays on certain machines. Their Athlon XP 3000+ couldn’t even play a 480p movie trailer at 24fps. They couldn’t play a 720p version of the same file. The same machine didn’t have problems with a different trailer, a WMV-HD 1080i trailer. This shows that the H.264 codec is really expensive, CPU time wise.

Their second machine was a 4000+ with two Gainward 7800GTX cards. On this machine they got quite different results. The 480p H.264 clip played fine, as did the 720p clip.

Personally, I’ve had highly variable experiences playing back HD content on my 2.53GHz Pentium 4. One clip will play fine, while another (like the Gears of War HD trailer) won’t play well at all. I don’t remember off hand which were WMV-HD and which were MPEG4 or MPEG2, so I’ll have to look into that some more.

Link: the INQUIRER - How to play H.264 content on your PC

After much criticism of their new PVP-OPM in Windows Vista (aka Longhorn), Microsoft has responded with their defense. And it’s not a strong one!

Basically, Microsoft just shifts the blame.

Basically, he blames the content provider. Sure, it’s not Microsoft’s fault for not standing up for the consumer. Why should they? They’re out to make a buck. Now perhaps with the advent of this bizarre notion known as “competition”, Microsoft could actually run the risk of having to stand out from the pack.

Link: gadget blogspot - MS MVP tries to prove DRM isn’t evil

Pursuent to this article about playback of H.264 video, MacWorld UK is reporting that Apple has released it’s third preview version of QuickTime 7 for Windows. QuickTime 7 is notable for its inclusion of the H.264 codec, to be used by HD-DVD and BD (Blu-ray Disc).

[Apple] declares its solution, “the industry’s first mainstream H.264 solution for streaming and playback of High Definition (HD) video on Windows”,

With the software originally scheduled for release this summer, testing is reaching a critical phase. Apple reports it is: “Determined to make QuickTime 7 the best it can be, and Apple welcomes your suggestions.”

Minimum system requirements include: 233 MHz Intel Pentium class or better processor; At least 128MB of RAM; Windows 2000 or XP.

Recommended system configurations are: 1.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or faster processor; At least 256MB of RAM; 64MB or greater video card; Windows 2000 or XP

Link: MacWorld UK - Apple ships QuickTime Windows preview 3

The WSJ reported yesterday that support for the HD-DVD rollout this fall is waning. Paramount had committed to releasing 20 HD-DVD titles in the fourth quarter, and now won’t release any. Universal is scaling back from 16 titles to 12. And Toshiba’s HD-DVD player will probably be the only HD-DVD player available this year.

These things put a dent in the HD-DVD launch which is scheduled for the end of this year. The HD-DVD camp is getting a head-start on the Blu-ray camp by coming out this fall, but it looks like it’ll be a timid step instead of a bold entrance. Breadth of support is vitally important for either Blu-ray or HD-DVD to succeed. And if it looks like studios are getting cold feet, that’s not a good sign to consumers.

Which is only good news for the Blu-ray camp, of course. And Blu-ray, it seems, is still facing media bias against Sony. In the WSJ article, it says that HD-DVD is backed by “Toshiba Corp. and others” while Sony is mentioned as the Blu-ray supporter. What about all the other Blu-ray supporters? Shouldn’t it have said “Sony and others”? There are more big name “and others” supporting Blu-ray than HD-DVD. It would be nice if WSJ didn’t give Sony short shrift. 1up.com continues this bias in their coverage of the WSJ article, saying “Clearly [Microsoft] won’t support Sony’s proprietary Blu-ray technology”.

First of all, why not? Microsoft has always been known for doing what’s best for itself and, its agreement with Toshiba notwithstanding, it could still choose Sony’s Blu-ray if it feels it would be better for the Xbox 360 to do so. I, for one, think it would be a smart move. And as a matter of fact, Microsoft has not yet confirmed that it will use HD-DVD. Bill Gates said “we are looking at whether future versions of Xbox 360 will incorporate an additional capability of an HD DVD player or something else.” That “something else” could be Blu-ray. This is the extent of Microsoft’s committment to HD-DVD in the 360, and it’s not firm. (For more on why Microsoft should use Blu-ray in the Xbox 360, see my article about it today on PS3Blog.net.)

And second, if you’re going to call Sony’s Blu-ray proprietary, even though there’s a gazillion companies supporting it, you should at least acknowledge that HD-DVD is a proprietary format as well, developed by Toshiba. OR!!! If you look up proprietary in the dictionary, you get “Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent.” So either Blu-ray and HD-DVD are both proprietary (being developed by Sony and Toshiba) or neither are (there’s widespread industry support behind both). And the DVDForum’s support for HD-DVD means squat. There’s an association of manufacturers (that’s all the DVDForum is) behind Blu-ray as well. It’s called the Blu-ray Disc Association. So 1up.com is being just a bit specious with their statement.

Link: 1UP.COM - HD-DVD Support Waning
Link: AVS - HD-DVD Rollout, Set for Holidays, Gets Scaled Back

Mike over at HD for Indies has written “a bunch of stuff about HD DVD and Blu Ray and why they may be heading towards status as Laserdiscs 2.0 (expensive, rare, difficult to work with), as well as a ton of stuff about Apple’s possible downloadable movie service, and the hardware/software related to it.”

Hollywood’s Folly & Why High Def DVDs=Laserdisc 2.0
HD options? Apple’s downloadable HD movie service & HW?
More Thoughts on Possible Apple Video Playback Device
Further thoughts on iVideo Store - eBay for video?
A-Ha! How the Apple Home Theater Setup would work-UPDATED AGAIN

Yesterday introduced two new PureVision Plasma displays and two new Elite PureVision Plasma displays.

Using a new Crystal Emissive Layer, these panels have improved contrast ratios and black levels.

The non-Elite models are the PDP-5060HD (50″) and PDP-4360HD (43″) . The Elite 43″ and 50″ models are the PRO-930HD and PRO-1130HD. The Elite models use a separate Media Receiver. All models include CableCARD and multiple HDMI inputs. It includes a TV Guide EPG, letting viewers surf the channel guide up to eight days in advance.

Retail prices are:
PRO-930HD $5000
PRO-1130HD $6500
PDP-4360HD $4500
PDP-5060HD $6000

Link: eCoustics.com - New Pioneer PureVision Plasma Televisions Make HDTV Look Picture Perfect
Link: eCoustics.com - New Pioneer Elite PureVision Plasma Televisions