Las Vegas, Nevada, January 2002, The Consumer Electronics Show, C.E.S., you can never get tired of flying into this town at night. The size, variety, and impact of the lights have grown every year. No pinball machine or computer game could compete. It is an entertainment Mecca based on gambling where nothing is too showy or flashy. Like television, or the Internet, this city has decided that rather than making you fly to New York, or Paris, or Rome, they would bring it to you. Where better to have a convention for the hardware that brings it all into your home at your leisure. They can even take you to the future or the past.

This is my 24th year at C.E.S., I remember when the main show was in the summer at Chicago, and Las Vegas was the new show, before computers, cell phones, the DVD, or even the CD. I was there when high-end audio was the darling of the show, when being a purist for natural reproduction was not equivalent to being related to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Stereotimes has asked me to author a new department for the magazine devoting the same purist point of view we have in audio to the home theater environment which I find quite exciting. This encompasses far more than just video, and has little to do with television, as most people know it. There were many impressive new products at the show, but creating a good home theater is about choosing the right product for the right application. I hope I can help the reader better understand what is involved in bringing the theater to the home, and how to choose the best.

And what was new at the show? Oh just the DVDr, larger and better plasma screens, better and less expensive video processors, smaller cheaper and better DLP projectors, and the best image ever shown at any show, possibly anywhere, at any price (and what a price!). That was just the visual imaging side of home theater, and quite enough for this article.

The unanimously most dynamic, three dimensional and detailed image went to a $75,000.00 projector with a rated output of under 240 ANSI lumen, the Accurate Imaging 9X. Accurate Imaging is a new company formed by James Wellnitz, formerly the president of Vidikron of America, and Bob Rosser, of Ultimate Entertainment. Their new cabinet design houses the same engine used by several companies including Vidikron and Madrigal, but with hundreds of changes internally. They had it coupled with a $45,000.00 Teranex processor.

You could also spend $10,990.00 for a Sharp DLP and get a very nice 800 ANSI lumen image. That's more than three times the brightness for less than one sixth the cost. It is like talking about candles in relation to halogen bulbs, and the comparison would hold if you were talking about light bulbs. But the 240 ANSI lumen image looked brighter and more three-dimensional. How could it look brighter you ask? It is all in how the eye sees. I don't believe that light output is any relative measure of a projector on an absolute scale. The proof was the reaction I saw to the images displayed at C.E.S. We know, for example, that the ear hears logarithmically. That means it takes ten times the power to double the perceived volume. The same is true of the eye. It takes ten times the lumens to double the perceived brightness. But the eye has one more factor that comes into play, the iris. The iris raises and lowers the threshold level for sight by opening and closing. Thus our eyes accommodate the overall brightness level. There is a minimum level of light the eyes need, and a level that is too bright, but between those two, other factors come to play. If a 240 ANSI lumen image appeared brighter than an 800 ANSI lumen image, there must be other factors that effect perceived brightness.

With the DVD as the preferred source for the home theater, digital artifacts can be created in the recording process, or at playback by the video processing. A digital display device such as a plasma screen, DLP, DILA, or LCD, is constantly processing the signal in ways that can degrade image quality. There are differences in how often and how directly each pixel is accessed and how many possible shades of color can be produced. There are mechanical differences that can limit black level, the primary colors used and the output spectrum of the bulb come into play. In fact there are so many factors in the design of a video display device that it takes a specialized professional with the proper experience to understand.

What does that mean for the enthusiast who wants to understand how to choose the right product? Display devices are often designed with inaccuracies purposely inflicted on the image in order to wow the viewer with a certain effect that may make some images seem better, but to the detriment of other images, and causing an overall inaccuracy. Now, you may ask why someone would want anything but an accurate display. The answer is marketing. A product must be able to differentiate itself from its competition. In the sales situation, the image that stands out the most will get the most attention. To achieve the most dynamic image, the manufacturers design inaccuracies into the image that make it stand out on the sales floor. The problem is that it is often impossible to remove those inaccuracies even for trained technicians with access to the service sub menus. Without testing against the reference, I cannot attest to the accuracy of any TV, Projector, or flat panel device.

In video, there always exists a reference to compare to. If the reference is a film source, there is a master film to reference to. If the reference is video, there are exact standards on how to accurately set the display device. These standards have been addressed by Joe Kane in his famous laserdisc "A Video Standard" and the following DVD, " The Video Essentials", and by The Imaging Science Foundation, which he founded with Joel Silver. Still, I find that most display devices have inaccuracies built in for marketing purposes, and can only be brought closer to the reference, but will never be absolutely correct. Where they stray from absolute accuracy, I will try to help the reader understand what that means to the image.

How would this apply to the products displayed at C.E.S. for example? Let's compare the $75,000.00 ($120,000.00 with the Teranex processor) image from Accurate Imaging with the $10,990.00 image from the Sharp XV-Z9000U DLP.

While the Sharp created a very acceptable image that had good detail and depth with decent blacks and good color accuracy, it was totally outclassed by the Accurate Imaging 9X. Pixels were visible from normal viewing distance on the Sharp and gray scale was limited making individual images appear flat. Small details were blurred in motion, and the color spectrum leaned toward blue. The Accurate Imaging 9X excelled in depth of field (small images were clear even in motion and retained their individual three dimensionality). Each image was clear, fully detailed without harsh edges. DVD sources looked like what you would expect from a high definition source, and true HD looked like you had opened a window. You could not see lines, or pixels, or any evidence on the screen that you were not looking at film, except for the rare 1 line thin image that would dither between lines, and that was only visible when you were inches away from the screen. I would rate each of these products at the top of their price class. Sharp expects to update their model later this year. The new model will sport the new black metal high deflection micromirror chips from Texas Instruments for greatly improved contrast ratio, and a lower price.

The Sharp display was on the main floor in the Convention Center. They had two theater displays, and several external displays with their plasma units and projectors. My interest is in product for the home theater, and it seems that Sharp has decided to address the home theater at a fairly high level. They are at the edge of consumer, almost into the high-end stratosphere. Both of their theaters were very impressive. They used their HD DLP in each case for the video, but they were also displaying their new one bit amplifiers and surround processor with a B&W 802 system in one room, and a Legend Audio speaker system in the other. Both rooms sounded and looked great! They were both about as good as home theater can get without mortgaging the house. This is the most important point. I have a simple rule for pricing product for home theater as it approaches the state of the art. Simply put, ten times the price brings you half the distance between where you are and perfection. This is the law of diminishing returns. The trick is to get the maximum quality level before the law makes the price unreasonable. Sharp displayed an excellent price/value ratio.

The show demonstrations of DLP projectors at Plus, Seleco-Sim-2, Infocus, Runco, and Dwin all had flaws that caused the images to be less acceptable than what I saw at Sharp. I must point out that I cannot make definitive statements about any of these units until I have one for review.
I found the Plus Piano HE-3100 the most interesting new product. This projector was premiered at the CEDIA show. This is a cute little box that can sit on your coffee table. It is very quiet, and has a short throw distance. It sports a DLP chip with 848 by 600 native resolution, 450 ANSI lumens, and a 700 to 1 contrast ratio. With a list price of under $3,000.00, and picture quality that could compete with much more expensive projectors, this was definitely the best buy at the show. The color accuracy, depth of field, black level, detail in motion, and relative lack of digital artifacts put this projector in competition with much higher priced product. They have laid down the gauntlet and I believe the industry will soon respond with competitive product.

Infocus premiered their new small home theater projector featuring the 848 by 600 DLP chip, the Screenplay 110. While its light output specification is much higher at 1000 ANSI lumens and it is using the Faroudja video processing chip set, the picture quality was slightly better than the Plus Piano at $2,000.00 more. The Infocus is far more flexible and accepts high definition sources through the 15 pin D-sub input. It would be preferred for larger screens where higher light output is needed. Infocus expects to premier a 1280 by 720 unit this year for under $8,000.00, with higher light output than the Sharp XV-Z9000U.

I could not get the time in my four days at the show to get enough experience with any other products to evaluate them. There were new rear projectors, both CRT and digital (DILA, LCD, DLP) from JVC, Panasonic, Thompson, and Pioneer. Mitsubishi showed a 9-inch CRT rear projector with both satellite and terrestrial receivers on board. Faroudja showed a new processor with a DVD drive digitally interfaced internally.

I expect to get some of these products in for evaluation soon, and my next article will detail more of these new products. They are numerous, and they each advance quality and features in their own way. I expect it to be an enlightening adventure.