There are a couple things about a video display that makes it look good. One of those things is the contrast ratio. Historically, CRT has had the best contrast ratio. Ever since, display manufacturers have been trying to match or exceed CRT’s historic contrast ratios. Many manufacturers are doing this with a dynamic iris on projectors. But a flat panel display doesn’t use an iris, so they have to find other ways to do it.

Sharp at CES 2007 showed off a 37″ “Mega-Contrast” premium LCD panel with a supposed 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. (How they would measure that is beyond me.) The Engadget folks said that this set’s black levels looked better than SED televisions (based on the same principles as CRT) they’ve seen.

Ah, we live in interesting times!

Sharp’s 1,000,000:1 Mega-Contrast Premium LCD vs regular LCD

One of the cool things about this business is seeing all the cool new stuff they come out with. Like the XV-Z20000 DLP projector from Sharp. Ultimate AV are the lucky folks, and get a chance to look at all these gadgets. They recently reviewed this projector, and they liked what they saw.

The Sharp projector costs $12k. It’s a 1080p DLP projector with two HDMI inputs, plus a DVI input. The display will accept 1080p/60, but it will not accept 1080p/24.

How did the Ultimate AV folks like the projector? They liked it a lot. Of course, the law of diminishing returns applies, and $12k doesn’t get you twice the performance of a $6k projector. But they still see the value - the projector has an especially detailed image.

Sharp XV-Z20000 1080p DLP projector

CES 2007, from the reports I’ve seen, was basically a Blu-ray love-fest. It showed very well, and nobody defected from the BD camp over to the HD DVD camp (there are currently more BD supports). Onkyo and Meridian have announced HD DVD players, but Thompson/RCA has said that they won’t be selling their re-badged Toshiba HD DVD player anymore.

But Toshiba’s not going to take this lying down. Toshiba will be releasing new HD DVD players this year. Plus, it plans to ship an additional 1.8 million HD DVD players to the North American market this year.

But will that be enough? Sony will sell at least triple that many (a conservative estimate) PS3’s alone. Add to that their BD player. And Panasonic’s, Pioneer’s, Samsung’s, Philips’, and Sharp’s.

We’ll see…

Toshiba Readies Millions of HD DVD Players

Pioneer is boasting that its new plasma technology gives a better contrast ratio than the upcoming SED displays from Toshiba and Canon. Remember that SED gives CRT-like image quality because the technology is so similar.

The new [plasma] technology premieres a completely re-engineered display infrastructure, including a new panel, filter and application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC).

IGN got a chance to look at one such Pioneer plasma at the CES show, and they liked what they saw. “In comparison to what is generally though of as best-of-breed image quality, Pioneer’s new plasma display was astounding. The demo began with both screens in idle-black. That is, the new plasma display looked black; Pioneer’s current plasma looked shockingly gray and over-lit.”

I hope that this kind of technology trickles down to their whole plasma line. I’ve never been a big fan of flat panels because of the cost and burn-in (for plasma), and this new tech won’t help matters. But it’s good for companies like Pioneer to push the envelope and force other manufacturers to do one better. Great stuff.

CES 2007: Impressions of Pioneer’s “SED Killing” Plasma
Pioneer Launches Breakthrough Display Technology

The HDTVExpert, Peter Putman, took a look at the Sharp Aquos LC-52D62U LCD HDTV.

Physically it’s a really nice looking set, with a piano-black finish. It also has two HDMI connectors, and other inputs, but no VGA or DVI inputs. But that’s not what counts, is it. How about the picture? The picture has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels.

And how do those pixels look? Well, the set had big problems upscaling SD signals. Even deinterlacing a 1080i signal didn’t work so good.

This 52 inch television is only $4k MSRP (available on the street for much less), but the scaling is so bad you’d need to use an external scaler. So your mileage may vary.

Review: Sharp Aquos LC-52D62U LCD HDTV

One of the advantages the BD camp always had over the HD DVD camp is that it had a lot more consumer electronics manufacturers making players than the HD DVD camp did. Hmm. I said “had” and “did” like that was about to change, which it’s not. But the HD DVD camp did get another manufacturer onboard - Onkyo.

At CES 2007 Onkyo announced that they’ll be selling an HD DVD player in the North American market first, and in 2007. Other details are a little more sketchy.

I’ve never owned an Onkyo product, but the company has long held my interest. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with.

Onkyo to Launch HD DVD Player in 2007

OK so maybe not a full disappointment, but for me I was looking for only one thing at CES. A pioneer line of receivers that could do DTS-HD, DD +, and lossless audio with HDMI 1.3.

Simple request. No?

Denon may be vague about ship dates or prices for their receivers, but at least they say they are going to do it.

Maybe my money will be going to Denon this year.

Pioneer Announces Four Low to High-End A/V Receivers - Gizmodo

Lots of things are happening at CES this year, and I can’t keep up with it all. The news is coming fast and furious, and here is some HD camcorder news from Sony and Panasonic.

Panasonic announced that their HDC-SD1 camcorder ($1,499) will record HD on SDHC Memory Cards. Their HDC-DX1 camcorder ($1,399) will record HD material on DVD discs. Both camcorders will use the AVCHD format to record in 1080i. A 4GB memory card will hold about an hour of HD, while a dual-layer DVD will store about 40 minutes on a dual-layer DVD-R, which sounds a bit backwards to me.

Sony also announced four HD camcorders to be released in February and March. Two will store in AVCHD on DVD-R discs, and two will store on mini-HDV tapes. Prices will range from $1000 to $1400.

Panasonic’s New HD Camcorder Line
Sony’s HD Camcorders

There is lots of Blu-ray stuff happening at CES. Here’s a quick rundown.

Sony’s moving away from MPEG2 for their BD releases, and towards AVC. Casino Royale will be an AVC release.

Some more interesting facts:

• Blu-ray has 96% of the HD player market in Japan. “In terms of Japan the game is already over there.”
• Out of 10,000 registered PS3 owners surveyed, 90% have tried and will buy Blu-Ray discs. 75% plan to use their PS3 primarily as a Blu-Ray player.
• On December 20th, Blu-Ray sales finally surpassed HD-DVD sales (note: no word on if this is players or software)

Fox plans to release 7-10 BD titles per month, most being 50GB titles. Buena Vista is big on BD as well. They will release Cards on BD this summer, and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies sometime this year.

CES 2007: Blu-Ray Fights Back!

Edit:

Casino Royale will street on March 13th.
The Pirates movies will debut in May.

The HD DVD group has announced a new triple layer version of the disc for recording, and that each layer will be able to hold an additional 2GB. Previously an HD DVD could hold 2 x 15GB = 30GB. Now it’ll be 3 x 17GB = 51GB! Hmm. One GB over the 2 layer BD’s 50GB. Coincidence?

The new disc format will be proposed to the DVD Forum for standardization this year. Products might make it to market by the end of the year.

Interestingly, the HD DVD group has also released some sales figures. As of January 5th, 2007, 150,000 HD DVD players (including standalone, HD DVD add-ons, and laptops) have sold. 28 HD DVD titles have been sold per player, which I think is a lot.

HD DVD Unveils Plan for 51GB Disc

OK we know the limit of HDMI is 15M or for us trolls south of the Canadian border 45 feet. Even with these specs you usually need a pretty thick cable to get that run without any “sparkles”.

So now comes Phillips with Wireless HDMI that runs on UWB (Ultra Wideband) so it shouldn’t interfere with all your wireless networking.

Look for it in the second quarter in the $250-$300 range.

Philips intros Wireless HDMI - Engadget HD

We heard last year that Warner Brothers patented some technology to do with creating a hybrid HD DVD and Blu-ray disc. It looks like their hard work is actually going to amount for something, because Warner will introduce its new “Total HD” disc at CES this tomorrow, according to the NY Times. Warner’s Barry M. Meyer says that Warner came up with the Total HD disc when they concluded that neither format would win the format war anytime soon. Warner Brothers is also working on a disc that will include the DVD format as well.

Any more details will have to wait until Tuesday. The biggest question of course is: how many layers? How many HD DVD layers will Total HD support, and how many BD layers? It is vital to the HD DVD camp that the format supports at least two layers, for 30GB of storage. The BD camp would like to see two layers as well, for 50GB of storage, though this is not as vital. Many 25GB BD discs look quite good, and it quality in 25GB discs seems to be more related to the authoring process than to space limitation.

So I eagerly await tomorrow’s announcement from Warner Brothers, and hope to buy some Total HD discs soon.

New Disc May Sway DVD Wars

Surprisingly enough, at least to me, LG’s dual Blu-ray and HD DVD format player has been resurrected, and will actually see the light of day. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think it would happen. But here we are.

LG will be launching the player at the CES show this week. Of course, launching a player and selling a player are two totally different things. LG hasn’t revealed when the player will go on sale outside of a vague “early 2007″.

LG has set the price for their BH100 combo BD and HD DVD player to be $1,199. Not bad considering that these are two new formats and that I just saw a new Rotel DVD (not HD DVD, just DVD) player announced with an MSRP of $300 more.

The player will support 1080p, which is expected. But it will also support DTS HD, which is more rare. Nice to see.

LG to Launch Dual-format Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD Player
LG’s BH100 hybrid Blu-ray & HD DVD player: $1,199
LG’s Dual HDTV Player: The War Isn’t Over

Pictures:

Best Buy LG BH100 Page

On a side note, LG also unveiled a BD burner for the PC that also reads HD DVD discs. That’s an interesting combination. It will record at 4x speed at will retail for less than $1200 in the first quarter of 2007.

LG Unveils New Super Multi Blue Dual-Format Burner

Samsung has announced their second-generation BD player, the model BD-P1200. Remember that Samsung was first to the market with their original BD player, the BD-P1000, which had an MSRP of $999. This new player will support HDMI 1.3, DTS audio (by which I assume they mean DTS HD Master), and will launch in March with an MSRP of $799.

If I remember correctly, you can already get the previous-gen BD-P1000 pictured here for that much if you go deal hunting. But this is the new-and-improved version, of course, so you might like all the new stuff they like to cram in there.

Samsung unveils the first second generation Blu-ray player: BD-P1200