Audioholics recently took a look at the excellent Sanyo PLV-Z5 projector, those lucky dogs.

Remember that the PLV-Z5 is a 3LCD projector with a resolution of 1280 x 720. It has a contrast ratio of up to 10,000:1. It has a brightness of 1100 ANSI lumens. This projector has an MSRP of $1,995. It includes two HDMI inputs.

We’ve talked about this projector before. How great it is, how sharp it is. Etc. So I thought I’d just poiunt out that this is one heck of a good projector, and you can’t do much, if any, better for the price. Especailly considering the the $2k is just the MSRP and you could probably get it for much less than that.

Sanyo PLV-Z5 Projector Review

So here’s the scoop: in order to avoid some legal wranglings, Toshiba’s sold its share of the SED joint venture with Canon to Canon. But that doesn’t mean they’re out of the picture.

Toshiba will actually be manufacturing the SED displays.

Toshiba was not available to comment on the production schedule, but Atsutoshi Nishida, president of Toshiba was quoted in a December Nikkei Business report as saying the company’s SED production facility in Himeji, Japan was on schedule. In addition, in October 2006, CNET reported that SED had made some manufacturing breakthroughs that would make SED TVs competitive in the market with LCD TVs.

But that’s not the most of it. For the most of it, see the article linked below. There’s a lot more…

After all is SED and done, Toshiba not out of the picture

One of the most important things to remember about getting good picture quality when using a front projector is to have the room as dark as you possibly can. And by that I mean that the room should really be pitch black. Because whatever light there is in the room reflects off the screen and becomes the minimum black level you’ll end up seeing.

But Planar wants to go about changing that with a screen that tries to reflect as little ambient light as possible and as much projector light as possible.

The screen does an admirable job of fulfilling up to its promises. But only if you’re sitting in its considerably small sweet spot. But if the ability to watch a movie with ambient on is what you want, that’s the trade-off you’ll have to live with. Oh - and the fact that the 60″ screen weighs 69 pounds (rigid frame) and costs $1,399. (And it only goes up from there.)

Planar Xscreen — Home Theater with the lights on

Just yesterday I was saying how there’s not much coming out on HD DVD compared to Blu-ray, and now someone has to go prove me wrong! In the 1/25/07 - 4 PM PST update of The Digital Bits, Bill Hunt talks about Universal’s plans for the HD DVD format. And they’re BIG.

Universal is planning to release 100 movies on HD DVD in 2007. That’s an average of about 8 per month, which is quite impressive. Among the movies to be released are Liar Liar, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Brazil, and Erin Brockovich. Not only that, they also said that the first season of the new Battlestar Galactica will be released this year on HD DVD, which is cool. It needs all the help it can get picture-quality wise.

The Digital Bits - Celebrating Film in the Digital Age

Pioneer recently unveiled a new BD/DVD/CD writer - the BDC-202. This things is quite flexible, here’s what it can do:

BD-ROM Read 5X
BD-R/-RE Read 5X
BD-R DL/-RE DL Read 2X
DVD-ROM Read 12X
DVD-RAM Read 5X Write 5X
DVD-R/+R Read 12X Write 12X
DVD-RW/+RW Read 8X Write 6X
DVD-RDL/+RDL Read 8X Write 4X
CD-ROM Read 32X

This drive will be available in the 2nd quarter of 2007.

Pioneer Unveils the BDC-202 Blu-ray Disc Combo Drive

Now that I have a BD player (my PS3) I am looking forward to seeing movies in HD more than ever. So of course I have to see what’s up and coming, and I do that using HighDef Digest’s Blu-ray page. (See link below.) So I was checking it out today and was impressed by the number of titles coming out in the near future - about 25 titles in February alone. So I decided to check out the HD DVD release schedule, where February was listed to have 7 titles. I thought that maybe February was just an anomaly, so I look at the whole upcoming schedule, and noticed that the HD DVD list was thinner than the BD list by quite a large margin.

Of course this makes me happy personally because I have a BD player, so of course I’m biased. But that doesn’t change the fact that BD is getting a lot more titles than HD DVD is, and that’s what’ll decide the format war. If studios stay the course will current allegiances and title release schedules, there’s no way that HD DVD will win. I agree that that’s a big “if”, however, and the HD DVD camp may still announce more titles and initiatives. But I think it’s rapidly becoming the underdog in this fight.

Release Dates for Blu-ray Discs
Release Dates for HD DVD Discs

Pirates of the Caribbean was a surprisingly good movie considering it was based on a ride at Disneyworld. The sequel was good, but not as good, in my mind. The cool thing is that they’re both coming out on Blu-ray Disc, and Disney just announced when - May 22nd. That date is meant to coincide with the release of the third Pirates movie. Which surprised me, because I hadn’t heard anything about the movie before this.

Cars, the Pixar hit about stock car racing with a cameo voice acting appearance by Michael Schumacher, has also been dated. It’ll hits the streets in Blu-ray Disc form on June 5th.

Now the problem is that I have both Cars and Pirates on DVD already. I don’t want to go re-buying my whole DVD collection, but it’s so tempting!

Disney Sets ‘Pirates,’ ‘Cars’ Blu-ray Dates

So watching the State of the Union address last night was a hoot.

There was definitely some major filtering going on to reduce wrinkles, and what was Nancy Pelosi doing back there? Chewing her cud?

Anyway, back to the feeds. All of them looked good, but the overlay graphics were the big problem. I didn’t like CBS taking up the bottom quarter with that huge moving flagish thing. NBC I thought was second with a smaller less intrusive flag and the best was HDNet which just got out of the way and had a small bug in the corner. I didn’t check the ABC feed.

The sound was good on all feeds throughout the speech but what was that noise on HDNet at the end of the speech? It sounded like someone inside tin cans clapping. Very weird.

Anyway, This just goes to show that HD is still being tested and broadcasters still have a thing or two to learn.

The VPL-VW50 projector’s been making waves. Remember that it’s a 1080p SXRD projector that includes a 1080p HDMI input, excellent contrast ratio, great blacks, and it costs only $5k. Remember also that some have complained about a less-than-sharp pictures, while others have pointed out that you need to turn off a certain factory setting to do with overscan to get a sharp image.

S&V Magazine recently took a look at this projector, let’s see what they thought.

All in all they liked it very much. Though they did have problems with less-than-stellar deinterlacing of 1080i imagery and colour uniformity. The latter, though, was fixed by an adjustment in the service menu. That’s nice to see, but I don’t want to enter the service menu.

Sony VPL-VW50 1080p SXRD Front Projector

The State of the Union address here in the US gives those of us with HDTV’s a chance to see which channel has the best picture and sound.

This is because all the networks will be getting a pooled feed from one camera.

So pull up a chair and get that channel surfing remote out. Engadgethd will have a poll tomorrow to find out which is the best.

Why you should check out the State of the Union Address - Engadget HD

Panasonic sells one-third of all plasmas sold in the United States. I didn’t know that. But it was a cool little tidbit of information that I read in Ultimate AV’s review of the Panasonic TH-50PX600U plasma HDTV.

This 50″ plasma HDTV retails for $3,299, and has a resolution of 1366 x 768. (There’s that resolution again, Mole!) It has two HDMI inputs and a VGA input too if you want to hook it up to your PC.

So Ultimate AV put this plasma through its paces and found that it has its share of problems that can’t really be glossed over. (See the review for full details.) But for a street price of less than $3000, it does a lot for that money.

Panasonic TH-50PX600U High-definition Plasma TV