DirecTV has been sued in a class action lawsuit over the picture quality of their HDTV package. As many of you know, in order to conserve bandwidth, DirecTV’s HD resolution has been down-rezed to 1440 or 1200 before it is recompressed and sent out to the satellite. The complaint argues that DirecTV violated their promise of “astonishing” picture quality when they began this practice in 2004. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Technically these resolutions are still considered HDTV, but the complaint deals with a pretty subjective judgment of whether the picture quality is as good as DirecTV promised when Mr. Cohen first subscribed in 2003.

Via TVPredictions.com

An Israeli startup company, Amimon has raised a total of $21 million in venture capital to help fund their chipset designed to transport HDTV around the home wirelessly. This kind of technology has enormous potential, and will undoubtedly spur a huge crop of new products making enthusiasts and custom installers alike very happy. The technology allows for streaming rates up to 3Gbps, which is enough for 1080p HDTV. The standard, dubbed WHDI (Wireless High Definition Interface) could be placed in HDTVs directly, bypassing the need for external boxes. Thus, as with a matrix switch, you could consolidate your sources into one rack and stream them wirelessly throughout the home. The current costs associated with having multiple HD cable or satellite boxes include both a rental and programming fee, and can add up quite a bit if you want to have HD on more than one TV. The ability to cut those costs while still having HD content available to you anywhere in your home is a fantastic proposition. I can’t wait to see this technology mature!

Via Silicon News

Amimon’s Website

Congratulations Philadelphians…you finally can watch your local ABC affiliate nightly news in HD. You would have thought that this would be old news in a city the size of Philadelphia, but it is actually a first in the entire state of Pennsylvania! To help matters, they even included an entire HDTV FAQ on their website. Now if only such extensive information could be placed in retail consumer electronics stores so that customers and employees would have this basic information.

Action News in HD!

HDMI 1.3 is approved and Silicon Image is sampling HDMI 1.3 chips. November will see the release of the PS3, probably the first HDMI 1.3 product. The question, of course, is when will other HDMI 1.3 products come out? HDMI 1.3, remember, will support the new audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master.

Silicon Image says that a number of new HDMI 1.3 products will appear at January’s CES show. A/V receivers, HD televisions, and probably HD disc players will all be shown with HDMI 1.3 support. Frankly, I wonder why it takes so long. The spec is finalized now and manufacturers have known about HDMI 1.3 for a while. But while they’ll be shown at CES, that’s not to say that they’ll ship at CES. So maybe they won’t be available to consumers for a while after that. I would have expected products to come out much sooner, but oh well.

HDMI 1.3 Interface Due By End Of Year

by Art Feierman - Projector Reviews
www.projectorreviews.com

I spent three days in the grueling Florida sun (Orlando 92-95 degrees, 60% humidity), searching for interesting new projectors and related gear for home theater. OK, I was in doors most of the time, but offsite meetings at nearby hotels had me pretty withered.

That’s probably more than you wanted to know, so let’s get to products.

In no particular order here’s some of the more interesting things I saw:

Optoma: They are getting close to releasing their HD81, a genuine 1080p resolution single chip DLP projector. Suggested retail price is probably going to be $9999, when they ship in August (if they can hold to schedule). That should make it the first (relatively) affordable 1080p projector.

I’m dying to get my hands one for review, but they say that they won’t have review units until probably mid July. Alas!

I should note that they had a demo theater set up in their booth, (fully darkened) and were showing Phantom of the Opera, off of the Toshiba HD-DVD player. Damn, it looked really good. I love the extra sharpness of 1080p and can’t wait to put a 1080p projector in my own theater, because I like to sit fairly close.

Optoma also showed their HD7300, an enhanced version of the excellent HD7100 (click for review), with the same 1280×720p resolution. The HD7300 features a separate outboard processor box from Gennum, which sits with the rest of your equipment so you only have a single digital cable between the processor and the projector. The Gennum processing should prove to be even better than the stuff that drives the HD7100. Shipping very soon.

ProjectionDesign: This one is strictly for the rich and famous. If the Optoma HD81 looked great, the Action! 3 1080p from ProjectionDesign, is off the charts. It’s another widescreen 1080p projector, but this one is a 3 chip DLP. And, with 2500 lumens, it has amazing brightness, easily handling a large screen. An almost $25,000 price tag, though will scare off all but the rich, the famous, and hard core semi-rich-crazies.

*****

I’m a big fan of higher power widescreen projectors that can tackle some ambient light, for daytime viewing. Unfortunately today’s normal home theater projectors are mostly designed for fully, or near fully darkened rooms. Sure, some have “dynamic” or “family room modes”, brighter modes to help, but not really enough to watch a football game with a little light coming in the windows…

So it’s nice to finally see a few bright widescreen projectors that are better suited for brighter rooms, (not too bright please) but can also do a passable job for movie watching, these could prove to be very popular with gamers, sports addicts, typical TV watchers, etc., and some will fully satisfy movie watches as well. Consider:

Optoma: has their new EP1690 widescreen projector. Similar to their award winning HD72 (click for review) (my favorite under $2000 home theater projector), it is rated 2500 lumens and has a 2500:1 contrast ratio. If you have ambient light to deal with, you won’t see the difference between it’s 2500:1 contrast and the HD72’s 4000:1, but you sure will appreciate the extra lumens.

Mitsubishi: Wow! The almost brand new WD2000U (list price $5999) looks to be selling for around $4000! Although primarily designed for business applications, It offers 3000 lumens and a 2000:1 contrast ratio. That’s definitely enough contrast for decent movie viewing, and more than enough for HDTV and HD-sports. I’m looking to review the WD2000U later this summer! It uses the same 1280×768 Darkchip2 DLP chip found in popular lower powered, and highly rated, projectors like the Optoma HD72 and Mitsubishi HC3000. Note, we are now reviewing the HC3000 and should post the review around 6/27. The WD2000U, is loaded – with power zoom and focus, lens shift, and 4 optional lenses.

Although non-HD, Mitsubishi says they are selling a very healthy number of their tiny LED powered Pocket Projector. It fits in the palm of your hand, and produces a whopping 25 lumens! The market for these is gamers, cell phone and other portable device users, etc. It needs a dark area, and works best projecting images of 15” to 30” diagonal. Weighing just 1 pound, it sells for $799, and for now is exclusively sold at CDW. There’s even a rechargeable battery pack. Very cool, and the LED lamps last up to 10,000 hours!

Panasonic: No word yet on what and when they will replace their best selling PT-AE900u, but they have come out with a new model every fourth quarter, so we’ll probably have to wait for the CEDIA show to find out what’s next.

But Panasonic did show a new, killer HD projector, in the form of the PT-DW5000U. (Shown here) It is a widescreen version of their extremely successful single DLP chip PT-D5500U. It offers dual lamps for brightness and redundancy, is liquid cooled, has power everything, many lenses, and 4500 lumens! This is a $10K plus machine destined for movie theaters for showing advertising and movie trailers, sports books, sports bars, etc., needing power and widescreen. They demo’d it in their suite at Infocomm and it was truly impressive.

How about more moderately priced projectors? Here are a couple of “All-in-one” projectors:

Toshiba and 3M: Each showed DLP projectors that look identical, except that the Toshiba ET20 is black (the 3M folks call it the Darth Vader helmet), and the 3M is white. Both are All-in-one projectors, with built in DVD player (optional) and speakers. Both use an exceptionally short throw lens allowing a 6 foot diagonal image with the projector less than 40 inches back, allowing them to be placed on a table only a few feet from the screen! The Toshiba has Silicon Optix HQV processing, so should deliver an extremely high quality image. Typical of “All-in-one” projectors, it is WVGA 854×480, so not true HD. Toshiba rates it at 1100 lumens. We’re hoping to get either the Toshiba or 3M version in August timeframe for a review.

That’s a wrap for now. There are a few other products worth commenting on, but I’ll save them for a separate update. -art

Samsung’s has a plasma display that’s been fitted with ACAP. ACAP is a “bi-directional data broadcasting standard” which I think is kinda like CableCARD 2 in its purpose. With it, you can use your TV to check for news headlines, the weather, traffic conditions, etc. I wonder if the datasources you can see on an ACAP display is determined more by your cable provider or by the internet itself. I don’t know much about ACAP, but I would think it’s the former.

At any rate, this plasma is for sale in Korea, no word yet on when it’ll make its way to North America, or what you can really do with ACAP.

[via HDBeat]

Samsung SVP-56K3HDB, 56″ PDPTV with ACAP

Here are some older HDTV news items I missed the first time around:

Review: Samsung SP-H710AE Home Theater Projector
Ultimate AV: Maxent MX-50X3 Plasma Monitor
Sanyo TVs
Sound And Vision Magazine: HP md5880n 58-inch DLP HDTV
How-To: Scale video for better HDTV viewing
The New Structured Wiring