09/27/2002

CEDIA Expo 2002 -- The Custom Electronic Design & Installation Expo: 5 days of educational classes that started on Wednesday, September 25. The Expo show floor opens Friday, September 27. We will have photos of the new products we are seeing on Saturday and Sunday, September 28th and 29th, with a show wrap up on Tuesday, October 1.

Design Systems, Ltd. was greeted to Minneapolis by the first frost of the season. The weather has been grey and drizzly with temperatures in the 40s and 50s (not exactly Honolulu!).

Here are some of the trends that we will be seeing at this show:

1. An increased presence of hard drives in audio/video devices.
2. High Definition TV pricing continues to drop.
3. Increased High Definition programming. ABC announced that Superbowl 2003 will be broadcast in High Definition Television. This is great news in Hawaii, as KITV broadcasts a High Definition signal with rebroadcast on Oceanic Cable, if you have the Oceanic Cable High Definition Cable Box.
4. Flat panel displays are everywhere. We will be seeing some new sizes of flat panel TVs and the announcement of a new technology of flat panel display.

Stay tuned!

Peerless is introducing a new line of tabletop LCD TV/Monitor mounts that swivel and/or articulate. Beautifully finished in a silver color, they allow extremely versatile mounting of LDC TVs and monitors.

VisionArt provides this great solution when there is nowhere else to put a TV ... a painting rolls up inside of a decorative picture frame to reveal a plasma screen behind it!

Quicktime™/MPG movie of the VisionArt screen in action!

09/28/2002

Sony has a TIVO Series II unit that will ship at the end of 2002/beginning of 2003. It has front panel controls not offered on the TIVO-brand model. The Sony TIVO Series II also has a hard drive Personal Video Recorder with the ability to record a program from the internal cable-ready tuner and an Oceanic Digital Cable box simultaneously, so you can record 2 programs at the same time.

Launching in November is the Sony XBR Plasma. It combines XBR top-end electronics with a top-quality Plasma panel and really slick XBR styling.

Sharp introduced a full line of LCD TVs, including a 12", 15" and 20" sizes with speakers at the bottom of the screen. They are available in white, silver and black. Pricing is the same as the current units in silver with speakers at the left and right of the screen. The 12" (right) is $990, the 15" is $1,290, and the 20" (below right) is $1,999.

New Sharp 20" LCD TV.

Samsung will soon be shipping the largest (40") LCD-type wide-screen, flat panel TV display. It will be priced at about $10,000. The picture was gorgeous!

This is McIntosh's new DVD player with DVD Audio decoding. Price is expected to be about $3,500.

McIntosh's new top-of-the-line XRT30 loudspeaker will be shipping in November. Refined since we first saw it in January (at CES), this speaker was part of an incredible surround sound demonstration.
The sound was breathtaking!

Crestron introduced two new types of user interfaces. This is a Pronto-based remote with Crestron programming software and graphics capability.

Crestron also showed the eControl 2 that allows using a Viewsonic webpad to control electronic systems.

The Sonance Navigator K2 Control keypad is a universal IR learning keypad with a combination of buttons and touch screen that allows another user interface option for controlling a music system.

The new Niles 8-source keypad mates with their new 8-source, 6-zone Central Audio/Video receiver. Its great styling is similar to their 4-music source, 6-zone Central Music receiver. Additional keypads allow music source play etc./transport control of the music

Panasonic Door Intercom stations are now available in black, as well as the previously available white.

The VisionArt system of hiding a plasma TV behind a custom painting is shown here with a 61" plasma by Runco. Shown first with the painting in-place (right) and with the painting rolled up (below).

Quicktime™/MPG movie of the 61" VisionArt screen in action!

10/01/02

Mitsubishi is introducing a 50" plasma display with separate controller box. It will begin shipping in early 2003.

The FutureSmart home network distribution panel is shown here with an early prototype of a home services server (located at the bottom). FutureSmart has entered into a partnership with Intel and the panels will be branded with an Intel logo as well.

Crestron has a new version of their wireless Radio Frequency touch screen that includes buttons to the left and right of the touch screen for the most often used functions.

Lutron introduced a "HomeServe" radio frequency lighting controller that allows the use of special lighting switches that install with standard electrical wiring. This lighting processor provides more advanced control and programming capabilities than the Lutron Radio RA RF wireless lighting product currently on the market. The HomeServe product can be used in conjunction with a Lutron Homeworks system to extend ar add switching control.

Some final tidbits:

1. The use of home ethernet networks for music distribution is increasing with companies like Escient and Audio Request making hard drive music storage and distribution systems that send music over the ethernet network.
2. Future Game Consoles will take advantage of HDTV quality video and may also distribute music.
3. Keeping systems easy to use while incorporating cutting edge technology will be increasingly a challenge.
4. ABC announced that this years superbowl will be broadcast in HDTV. In Honolulu, this means we should be able to get it via the Oceanic KITV High Definition channel if you have the Oceanic Cable HDTV cable box. We will be confirming this with KITV and Oceanic soon.
5. Flat panel televisions are everywhere!. Prices have come down which has increased the demand. It seems that every manufacturer has one or several sizes of Plasma Televisions on the market.
6. Many components have software upgradable functions. Lexicon and McIntosh both announced software upgrades to their surround processors which add improved performance and new features.

That's it for now...

Aloha.