No real Meridian news today. I paid a visit but did not have time to see demo do to press conferences.

They now have 8ks in many colors. They had them all on display. They are $1k more than the black ones. Green, purple, red, yellow, blue, and black.

The press conference for them is tomorrow morning, so I will have something tomorrow night.

Dwin had a new DLP, the transvision 2. It is using the 1280x720 DLP with 6 element wheel. It has no digital keystone, it has a [censored] lens. Very cool idea. It should be out quarter one.

Sony showed off the superbit DVDs, very cool. They are the first to be encoded with a "seamless" layer break. This means no pause. I will for warn you that not all DVD player can do this and may crash. They did demo the difference between old and new Fifth element and Airforce one. The white gunk around letters was gone as was the I-frame pulsing with low bitrate scenes, and macroblocking in the background. They have half bitrate DTS and DD 448. When asked about full bitrate DTS, they explained that would have made the bitrate for the video content lower than the current DVDs. The original Fifth and Airforce one used 384 DD.

THX has a new program called Ultra 2. They now deal with multichannel music. They have also changed the layout for EX. The two rears are now placed side-by-side. (yes, next to each other.) There is some near boudary gain mode to remove boomy bass when speakers are placed close to the wall. (you can turn it on/off.) Pioneer has two ultra2 receivers coming.

There is the new buttkicker II. It is smaller, more powerful, more efficient, and cheaper! This one will fit in a 2x6 while the other required a 2x8.

Krell, EAD, Panasonic, and Kenwood have all said no when asked if they plan to support SACD. I will ask others tomorrow and post the results of that too.

Vigatec had their Dune processor connected to a G15 with ISCO anamorphic lens being fed by a PMDT with SDI output.

Stacey Spears
Co-Creator, Spears & Munsil High Definition Benchmark, Blu-ray Edition and Lighthouses of the Pacific Northwest.