Last year, Epson brought the price of 1080p projectors down to US$2,700 and today it’s dropping it again, to US$2,000 (officially US$1,999) for the all-new Powerlite Home Cinema 6100. We’re not saying it’s going to be as high-performance as Sony’s or Panasonic’s new US$3,500 projectors, but damn if that’s not the right price to build yourself a “budget” home theatre. Epson is also launching its Pro Cinema 7100 and 7500 UB 1080p projectors with some seriously high contrast ratios, but they’ll come at a much higher—and as yet unspecified—price. More info below.
No surprise that JVC is showing off their own ultra high-def 10MP wonder projector, since JVC’s D-ILA tech also powers the one we saw from Meridian a few weeks ago. That means it should deliver the same stunning 4,096×2400 resolution image—it’s like IMAX in your house. Or you can watch up to four full HD screens at once. The D-ILA tech, with its ridiculous pixel density, is also what lets this thing be a whole 65 percent tinier than conventional ultra HD projectors.
At CES, JVC showed off its super slim LCDs, but at the time there wasn’t a lot of detail on them. Today, the 42″ LT-42SL89 and 46″ LT-46L89 are shipping, priced at US$1,900 and US$2,400. Though the 38mm thick TVs actually measure 74mm in the middle, they come with an integrated HDTV tuner, which other slim TVs barf out into an external box to achieve their sub-inch status. I also admire the engineering involved in building a backlight that uses diffusion panels to kill the spots from placing lights too close to the panel, without killing the light.
We saw Sharp’s “Limited Edition” Aquos XS1 LCDs at IFA, and now at CEDIA they’re official for an as-of-now unpriced U.S. release in October (seeing a pattern here?). The 65-inch LC-65XS1U-S and 52-inch LC-52XS1U-S are 1-inch thin (at their thinnest point), and feature Sharp’s RGB LED backlight which they say improves colour accuracy over other blue-only LED backlights and allows for a 1,000,000:1 claimed contrast ratio. Joining them are the D65U and D85U serieses, which bring 120Hz to the mid-range. For full details and more shots of all, hit the jump.
A banner year for Blu-ray, to be sure, with a 100% drop in the most important stat of all, there in yellow. All this according to “Sony Figures.” They just can’t help themselves.
Sony may have teased us with its newest projectors at IFA, but today in the US, the company announced availability and pricing. We guessed US$3,000 for the VPL-HW10, but we were close but not totally right. The solid 1080p Bravia SXRD (LCOS-based) projector with 30,000:1 dynamic contrast is a “value” play, but it’s still expensive at US$3,500. The step-up VPL-VW70 doubles the contrast, and lets you fit an external lens that morphs the picture into a 2.35:1 widescreen ratio without losing pixels. (That extra lens is sold separately.) The VW70 is US$8,000. There aren’t much more details about either yet, but what we do have is below.
Sony’s DA6400ES and DA5400ES hi-def A/V receivers won’t exactly get your nerd juices (it’s a thing) flowing, but if you’re in the market for a high-end unit for your home entertainment system, they might be worth considering. Merging a relatively predictable feature set with newer DLNA streaming technology and an array of connection and input options, the receivers are intended to help integrate your central home entertainment system with the rest of your household media hardware, streaming files from your DLNA-compliant PC as well as sending out a second HD signal via CAT5e (ethernet cabling) so that you can distribute the system’s output over your home network.
The VAIO RT is Sony’s beast of an all-in-one PC, a widescreen 25.5″ display with HDMI-in and -out ports, Blu-ray recordable drive and up to 1TB of hard drive space. It also comes loaded with 8GB RAM, a multi-card reader and a built-in digital TV tuner. Of course, you’re still stuck with Vista, but with all that power underneath you should do just fine. Unfortunately, the RT has a beastly price tag to match—it starts at US$3300—when it arrives this fall. Press release down below. [Sony]
Sony’s LV all-in-one PC is the direct successor to the LT desktop PC released earlier this year, but this time around, they added two crucial features — HDMI-in and an integrated ATSC tuner. This means you can watch over the air TV or connect any HD cablebox, DVR, Game Console, DVD/Blu-Ray player, etc…, without the need for special hardware. Furthermore, the 24-inch WUXGA screen works regardless of whether the computer is on or not.
Sony is trying to bargain with potential buyers of Pioneer’s US$2,200 BDP-09FD: For US$200 less, you can get yourself the BDP-S5000ES. Meanwhile, it’s equally intended to regain the love of all those home-theatre enthusiasts who bee-lined it for the PS3 (rather than a dedicated BD player) because of its networking and speed.
