CEDIA Expo 2008: Sights and Sounds III

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I’ll skip the witty intro today and get right to the good stuff. Looking over my notes, here are some quick bits of interest gathered during my travels on the show floor:

D-BOX: Walk around long enough with a 30-pound sac of press kits on your shoulder and a comfy leather recliner starts to sound pretty appetizing. I sat with my feet up for a lengthy D-BOX motion chair demo and in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t. Now my stationary sofa seems somehow… inadequate. With more and more Blu-ray titles offering integrated D-Box Motion Code, this added layer of the entertainment experience is becoming harder to ignore. Now if only those same Blu-rays came with a tutorial on how to sell your spouse on the idea.

DVDO: I’ve long been a fan of DVDO and their iScan video processor/scaler/switcher devices. At the show DVDO was proudly showing off their new Edge product which appears to be a huge step forward in terms of simplicity and ease of use – and it’s affordable to boot. For $799 you get six HDMI 1.3 inputs, two component video inputs and dual HDMI outputs. One 1080p HDMI output goes to your HDTV and the other is audio only, for connection to your A/V receiver.

BELKIN: Belkin was again displaying their Flywire wireless HDMI product, but of more interest to me was their Powerline AV+ product. If, like me, you’ve had less than stellar results with wireless routers, the Powerline product allows you to use your home’s existing electrical wiring in place of standard cat5. Simply plug the transmitter unit into a wall receptacle in your office can connect it to your router with cat5. Wherever you want to add connectivity – say, in your living room gear cabinet for your new Profile 2.0 Blu-ray player – plug the receiver unit into a nearby AC receptacle. Using cat5, connect your Blu-ray player to that receiver unit and presto, change-o, you’ve got a hard wired internet connection to the router back in your office. Very cool.

WADIA: Here’s a company I don’t know much about but I was greatly intrigued by their 170iTransport unit. More than your average iPod doc, the Wadia offers “true bit perfect digital audio output” from your iPod and uses a coaxial S/PDIF digital audio output for connection to your receiver or amplifier. As first impressions go, the 170iTransport makes a good one and the apparent build quality was quite impressive. I can’t wait to see how this thing sounds in my theater when I feed it a few uncompressed music tracks. Quality sound… from an iPod. Surely there’s an oxymoron in there somewhere.

PANASONIC: Last but not least, the front projector report. I saw a number of exciting new LCD front projectors at the CEDIA expo, including new models from Mitsubishi (HC7000), Epson (Pro Cinema 7500UB) and Sony (VPL-VW70). You’ll notice I said LCD, and that’s because new DLP-based machines were somewhat few and far between. LCD on the other hand continues to improve and appears to have taken further strides in leveling the playing field with DLP. The most interesting projector I saw at the show was also the projector I sadly saw the least of – Panasonic’s PT-AE3000. The Panasonic rep on hand at the booth gave me a brochure but didn’t have much to say about the projector; my request for a demo was met with a half-hearted “maybe tomorrow” brush-off. It all seemed “very hush-hush and on the QT.” I had hoped they’d have a darkened demo tent set up for this puppy, but maybe we’ll get that at CES in January. With further improved specs, new frame interpolation capabilities and a “lens memory” feature for 2.35:1 projection, the PT-AE3000 is one projector I hope to see a lot more of and soon.

That’s all for now, folks. You can now officially begin making out your holiday wish lists. I know I am.

So long Denver. Next stop: Atlanta!