Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2318
CEDIA 2007 - Day 2: Sony's Booth Tour, LG's new HD-DVD/BD Player, JVC and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 6, 2007 2:37 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Sony's Receivers: Up close and Personal
Our first stop on day 2 of CEDIA was Sony and we managed to snag some pictures of its new receiver lineup that we talked about yesterday.
Sony had a STR-DA3300ES on display to show off its PS3 inspired Xross Media Bar GUI:
The GUI looks and works well, but as is often the case with CE products the animations were choppy and slow. Sony also demonstrated the BRAVIA Theater Sync support, which enables HDMI-CEC between supported products.
Sony also had its 810 Video Walkman and iPod docks on display, showing how they both work with the new receivers:
Here we have the rear of the 3300ES:
...and the upgraded model, the 4300ES:
The grand daddy, the STR-DA5300ES adds support for two zone HD video support over component as you can see from the picture below:
On the back of the unit you can clearly see all six of its HDMI inputs:
VW60 in Action
Sony ran a demo of its VW60 at the show as well as answered some of our questions.
The electric panel alignment doesn't physically move the panels, just adjusts the placement of the red and blue images projected in 0.1 pixel increments (the green pixels remain stationary). Adjusting panel alignment was easy using the remote.
The VW60 looked good in the demo, but honestly the RS2 demo we saw yesterday was more impressive. The comparison isn't valid though considering that we don't know how either projector was calibrated and they were displaying different content, on different screens and in different environments. It's going to be tough competition between these two.
According to Sony, the VW60 lens and lamp are the same as the predecessor, but the SXRD panels in the unit are newer and allow more light through thus the increase in light output to 1000 lumens.
VW60 Panamorph Combo
One of the features of the VW60 is its support for the vertical stretch necessary for 2.35:1 installations, Sony has also mentioned that it would be available with an optional anamorphic lens necessary for 2.35:1.
Just like JVC, Sony will be offering the Panamorph UH380 as its 2.35:1 lens option on the VW60.
VW200 in Action
Next up was Sony's flagship, the VPL-VW200 being demoed in Sony's theater.
The VW200 uses a 400W Xenon bulb vs. the 200W UHP lamp in the VW60, resulting in better color gamut but not necessarily greater light output.
The VW200 also adds an Ethernet port which Sony told us can be used for remote configuration/administration of the projector. The VW200 appears to have a built in webserver that will allow an installer to access via its IP address and access all the functionality of the unit, similar to what is currently capable over RS232.
Sony did demonstrate the benefit of the VW200's 120Hz Motionflow technology, which was honestly quite impressive. The problem with all of these 120Hz demos however is that they use canned content designed to really showcase the benefit of 120Hz and never seem to have any real world content capable of showing the true extent of the viewing benefit. The improvement is there, the question is how significant it is in real world viewing situations.
Sharp's BD Player
At Sharp's press conference yesterday the Aquos BD-HP20U Blu-ray player was announced. The 1080p player supports HDMI 1.3 and 24 fps output, it will be available starting this month for $549.99.Sharp claims that the player can get you from disc insertion to movie playback in as little as 10 seconds, but qualifies that statement by saying that movie content, video connection and monitor can all impact total start time.
While it's nice to have more BD players on the market, the price points are still far too high. Although the BD camp appears to be pulling ahead in terms of movie sales, Toshiba's aggressive HD-DVD pricing and promotion is really tough to compete with.
JVC HD100 in Action
The big showdown at this year's CEDIA is Sony vs. JVC and their new 1080p projectors. Both are giants in the LCoS world and both are competing in very similar spaces. We saw the DLA-RS2 yesterday at JVC's press conference, and today we got another look at the DLA-HD100 which you may remember is identical to the RS2, simply targeted at consumers vs. high end installers.
JVC confirmed that availability for both projectors should be in November at a price somewhere south of $8K. JVC's reps did refer to the HD100/RS2s being shown off as prototypes and that specs weren't finalized yet, but we should hopefully know what the final projector specs will be by the end of this month if JVC will stick to November as the release date.
We also asked JVC to confirm its no-internet sales policy with the HD100/RS2 and were told that the two will be handled much in the same way that the HD1/RS1 were sold. JVC can't guarantee that you won't be able to find one online but the idea is to keep these projectors as fairly high end and obviously help protect its dealer network.
The HD100 was just as impressive as the RS2 from yesterday, but once again it's virtually impossible to draw any conclusions about its ability to compete with the new Sony projectors.
JVC's 120Hz LCDs in Action
We got a few shots of JVC's 2nd generation 120Hz LCDs in action to help convey the type of demos being run on these things. The improvement is clear if you're standing right there, but once again we want to see real world examples in addition to these tests to really evaluate the technology.
LG's Dual Format Player, Take 2
LG had its superBlu BH200 combo player on display:
The BH200 plays both HD-DVDs and Blu-ray discs, this time around supporting all interactive menu standards from both the HD-DVD and Blu-ray camps.
The other improvement is start up time has been reduced significantly, the BH200 should get you from disc insertion to playback in about 15 seconds according to LG reps.
The BH200 should be available in October at a MSRP of $999.