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Sony's KDL-40ZX1, a 40-inch LCD HDTV Only 9.9mm Thin
Posted by Brian Lam at 4:16 PM on August 28, 2008
Sony Japan's ZX1 series 40-inch display is only 9.9mm thick at its narrowest, and 11.8kg. The display itself has only 1 HDMI port, while a wireless box can send the 120Hz, 1080p display up to 1080i images over a 5GHz channel many suspect is WHDM. That external port box will have 3 HDMI, 2 component, s-video, VGA, and even USB, mouse, and LAN port. All menus will be driven through an XMB Playstation-style crossmedia interface. Check out our hands-on of the skinny TV at IFA here. [Sony JP via Sony Insider]
Sound & Vision gave a gushing review to the Kaleidescape 1080p player, a DVD upscaler that streams movies from a home server for the price of a nice used car. They especially liked the Gennum VXP video processor chip, which upscales DVD content to vividly sharp 1080p detail, with very accurate colours and high contrast. The Kaleidescape's updated ability to play content without importing it to the server first was also a big draw. But seriously, US$4300? Come on.
Sony's latest STR-DG920 receiver looks nice (it's got a similar look to my cheap-o Sony receiver in a box and other Sony receivers), but has plenty of functionality as well. There's the 7.1 channel support, 1080p + 60/24Hz, four HDMI ports (woo!), Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD, dts High Resolution Audio, dts HD Master Audio, xvyCC, Deep Color, Sony's Digital Media Port (networking and connectivity with iPods and other stuff), is XM Connect-and-Play ready (5.1) and has 20-30 second auto-setup. It'll be available in June for US$600. 
Often when we encounter these super deluxe home theater rigs, we can't figure out where all that money goes. Not so for the Kipnis Studio Standard, the austere name Jeremy Kipnis gave to his US$6 million trial home theater, one he's happy to reproduce for any other way-too-well-off citizen who asks. I mean, yeah, it's totally ridiculous, but with 8.8 channels of surround sound, 16 subwoofers and video resolution four times as tight as 1080p, at least you see where 
Over the weekend, I checked out three versions of the Transformers movie: standard-def and high-def instantaneous downloads to the Vudu box with 4-Mbps net connection, as well as the HD DVD of the movie, playing through the Xbox 360. As you can see in the image above, the so-called HD experience from Vudu wasn't one that could come close to comparing with the HD DVD playback. In fact, it was awfully hard to see a vivid difference between that and the perfectly fine (and $2 cheaper) SD download.
Gaze into the future with us, foreshadowed by a company called MatrixStream. These wizards teased us with their 1080p HD streaming box 18 months ago, bragging about how it lets you instantly watch 1080p videos over a broadband connection. Fast-forward to today, and now they're announcing the streaming of a grisly-sounding zombie movie from 2006 called Shadow: Dead Riot. Such is the business of walled-garden TV networking. So as the company waits for the content to catch up, their 1080p on-demand hardware and software sounds like it's enormously powerful.
The 32-inch, 1080p AQUOS (LC-32GP3U) LCD TVs from Sharp are optimised for gaming by allowing gamers "quick access to the side terminal inputs", as well as activating "Vyper Drive". It's a dorky name for a feature, but it's supposes to cut lag time between console input and TV display so you won't have to miss so many notes in Rock Band thanks to TV response lag. In addition, there's HDMI 1.3, subwoofer output connection, 1080p/24, and built-in ATSC, clear QAM and NTSC tuners. It'll be $US1,599 in black, red, and white in December. Our only complaint is that it's only 32-inches. [
Optoma's got a new 1080p projector coming out in December, dubbed the HD803. It's new but its sits right below Optoma's HD80, one of the first to break the $US3000/1080p barrier, in price and performance. The crib sheet on the HD803 reads as follows: 8000:1 contrast ratio, 1200 lumens of output, and a DLP DMD chipset from TI. The projector's also armed with dual HDMI inputs, on top of the usual suspects. The price? $US2599, which isn't bad for a 1080p DLP projector, even if we've seen brighter ones. Optoma also unveiled two 720p projectors.
