CEDIA Expo 2014 - Day 2

Day 2 of the CEDIA Expo 2014 is the first day for the manufacturers exhibit booth to be open. I'll be talking to Sony, LG, JVC and Epson today and seeing some demos. Also I'll be visiting the booths booths of some manufacturers of home theater accessories. Also today and tomorrow I will be checking out a few new Audio/Video Receivers (AVRs) that are equipped with Dolby's new Atmos surround system and be reporting on those tomorrow.

Sony - The big news for Sony projector-wise is no news as the current home theater projector line up is being carried over for 2015. Also no price changes are being announced (at least not yet). My biggest surprise this morning was a Sony rep. told me there will be NO VPL-VW300es, that was announced last week at the IFA show in Germany, or the equivalent model released for the US market. <UPDATE> Yet a few hours later I heard the door is still open for a US version, but the decision has not yet been made. The other big news from Sony is their 2nd generation 4K player that was recently released. and currently only works for playing 4K movies on Sony 4K/UHD TVs and projectors, will soon receive a firmware update that will unlock the player for use with other brands 4K/UHD TVs and projectors as long as they have HDMI 2.0 inputs with HDCP 2.2. LG - I attended the LG press conference. I stopped by not expecting any news on home theater projectors, but rather to see the new UHD OLED TV that LG is introducing.

LG introduced new 4K UHD Smart OLED TV in sizes of 65" and 77" with list prices of just under $10,000 and $25,000 respectively. Both models unfortunately are only offered with curved screens (I really like flat screens much better) and both have a highly reflective screen surface and that combination can make for some really annoying reflections from room lights or the lights coming through windows.

These new models join 55" OLED HDTVs already being offered by LG. LG also introduced several new LCD/LED UHD TVs going up to a very large (but not so much so for projector fans) 105" model that if you have to ask the price, you can't afford (one hundred grand minus a few cents). JVC - JVC is carrying over their current projector models for another year. Also they have dropped their entry level models without e-shift (pseudo 4K) capability, including the DLA-X35. JVC is said to be working on next generation models (hopefully for introduction next year) that will include improved support for such things as full bandwidth HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 copyright protection and support for the upcoming Blu-ray 4K/UHD system. It was also implied that a native 4K projector would be coming forward at some point and perhaps a laser based light engine. Of course the JVC reps could not make any official statement when such future products might actually become available to consumers.

Epson - I reported on Epson in yesterday's blog (CEDIA Day-1) . Today I saw the LS10000 demo at the Epson booth. The projector put up an excellent image with native 4K input provided by a Redray player. Some minor issues were noted on one scene near the beginning of the short 4K demo, but these may have been an issue with the source material. Other than that one brief issue, the reminder of the 4K demo video looked excellent. Perhaps not quite as sharp as it would have been with a native 4K/UHD projector, but noticeably better than with native or upscaled 1080p images. Also for the upscaled 1080p demo it appeared the image sharpening enhancement was too aggressive, either from the settings on the projector itself or perhaps that specific Blu-ray recording had too much edge enhancement. Digital Projection - DP makes some high-end home theater projector as well as some ultra high-end modes. I viewed a demo on a "Insight 3K LED Projector". This a DLP projector with LED illumination and with 3000 lumens of light output.

It produced an image from a native 4K source that is as spectactular as is its price, a cool $150K. It is the only projector, or display of any type that I have seen that can actually display the full ITU Rec. 2020 color space. DP also has a laser model that is much brighter at 12,000 lumens but that model cannot display the highly saturated colors required by Rec. 2020.