It's not every day that you get to check out the world's thinnest LCD HDTV, let alone all three "ultrathins" currently in production, but that's what's going down. Sharp's super insane new flagship, the Limited Edition Aquos LC-65XS1U-S, arrived at my door in a bulletproof shipping container, 138 pounds of metal and glass measuring 65 inches diagonal that you can barely see from the side. Yes, in spite of its full-frontal gravitas, it measures only an inch thick at its edge, and a slightly more flexed 2 inches in the middle. It's gorgeous and ridiculous and designed to hang on a wall with no more protrusion than a dainty sketch in a frame—only it can blast Casino Royale at 1080p, 24 frames per second, while your face melts, and I'd have to sell my car twice over to buy it.

I love you Giz readers too much to stop with something that none of us can actually afford—and if you can afford it, you'll be decent enough to not let us know—so I called in the new slender 1080p models from Hitachi and JVC, too. As much lower-priced sets, I thought they'd just be the icing on Sharp's Limited Edition cake, but they turned out to be, in their own right, fine specimens. Let's review, shall we?

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3D displays may or may not be the next big thing in home entertainment, but JVC has just announced the first 3D projector intended for home theatres. Needing no special glasses, the JVC DLA-RS2 uses D-ILA projection (that's similar to LCD) and stereoscopic video processing to offer a 1080p 3D viewing experience.

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Check out JVC's Sound Garden concept: it's come leaping forth like a delighted lamb from the creative spring that is Tokyo's Design Week, and just like a newborn lamb finding its legs, it sure looks funny. An attempt at blending eco-friendliness with interesting design, it's a full hi-fi speaker system with bass-reflex ports and the whole deal, alongside little pot-like areas to insert plants. And it's all made of "eco-plastic," designed so you can connect together several of the elements to make a whole hive-like sculpture of audio and greenery. Did I point out it's weirdness? Oh I did. Thank goodness it's just a concept. [AVWatch]

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Formats never truly die, but their eras always have a few painful stages of decline. First, there's the arrival of a promising new competitor, then its steady rise, which is invariably followed by a mourning period and the final purging of last-gen products from the market. The last stage of obsolescence for of the long-presumed-dead format is upon us: JVC has announced that production of their single remaining player will stop immediately.

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Digital tech has reinvigorated the 3D dream since the cardboard glasses and headaches of yesteryear. JVC showed off a nifty prototype TV at CEATEC outside Tokyo that converts high-def 2D video into what it calls "pseudo 3D" in real time. With the eyewear on, it takes a few moments for your brain to adjust, and then footage of the Alps in spring starts taking on eye-popping depth. It's not exactly convincing enough to want to reach out and touch the wildflowers, though it makes regular flatscreens seem, well, very flat in comparison.

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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 4,096x2400 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.

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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.

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A new set of in-ear phones to be released in Japan later this year is claiming to be the first to have speaker drivers small enough to actually fit inside your ear canal. Usually the drivers are in the bulbous part of the buds, with a narrow hollow channel leading into the ear. JVC is claiming better sound and isolation because there's less room between your ear drum and the speaker. I love in-ear phones, but personally I'm fine with giving my tympanic membranes a little breathing room. [Tech ON]

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Right back in January we brought you news that JVC had worked out some magic for making super-slim LCD TVs, and now they're official products. The 42-inch LT-421L89 and the 46-inch LT-46SL89 measure up at just 3.8cm deep (7.4cm at the centre) and let JVC say they're the "world's thinnest tuner-equipped LCD TVs." The tuner-equipped part distinguishes them from skinnier Aquos TVs, which dump the electronics to a separate box. They're full HD, and will be available July for US$1,899.99 for the 42-inch and US$2,399.99 for the 46-inch. Press release below.

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For those of us who have an iPod (or two) along with an iPhone (or two) under one roof, JVC has just released the NX-PN7 (we had a hands-on way back at CES). Aside from docking more than one iThing at a time, the US$149.95 NX-PN7 features AM/FM tuning, alarm clock, timer and unspecified video out. Plus, the dock features two illuminated strips (one under each iPod) that can display nine programmable colours. That's probably enough selection to match at least one of the other superfluously illuminative devices you have floating around the house. [JVC]

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