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CEDIA 2007 Showcases Maturing HDTV Technology, Part II

DENVER, CO -- CEDIA 2007, at the Denver Convention Center, was held September 5-9. This reporter was able to stop by for a few hours to get an overview. This is Part II of the report. (Part I was published on Monday.)

Savant. Savant is building a very nice home control system. Everything is based on Macintosh technology, from the server that manages the house to the installation and configuration software to the display and control system. One option is to have a coffee table-like horizontal surface that serves as the command center. At first it looks like Microsoftis Surface Computing, but itis all Macintosh. Another option is a touch screen display driven by a MacBook inside, and sitting upright. Their system makes heavy use of Mac OS X technologies, especially Core Graphics, and Leopard will really allow them to do some fabulous new things, according to CEO Robert Madonna. Find out more at the Savant Website.


DirectTV. DirectTV is definitely on the HD bandwagon and had a healthy sized booth. The were demoing their new HR21 and HR21 Pro receiver plus DVR. The Pro version, due in December 2007 is rack mountable and is designed for home theater systems. It has a 500 GB hard disk and can record 100 hours of HD. The HR21 for normal installations is missing the ATSC tuner to save on cost, can only store 50 hours of HD and looks to also have a eSATA interface to external storage. The HR21 is expected at the end of September. Both output up to 1080i, have two satellite tuners, and have Component, Composite, and, interestingly, HDMI out on an optical link.

VuDu. This is a startup company that has devised a small box, about the size of an Apple TV. It connects to the home LAN, and has an HDMI output. One can call up a library of about 5,000 movies (in SD), and view one immediately for from US$0.99 to $ 3.99. Or outright buy the movie for US$4.99 to $19.99. THeir spokesperson said that all the major studios are on board with this because the their is full DRM and the movie stays on the device -- although external storage via USB2 is planned.

At about the end of the year, they expect to start offering HD movies. To view SD movies in real time will require a bandwidth of 2 Mbps and HD will require 6 Mbps. Alternatively, the movie can be downloaded and stored for later viewing.

The advantage of the Vudu from the studio perspective is absolute control of the content and pricing. For the user, it is the immediacy of being able to access 5,000 movies now and more to come. However, for those willing to wait 24 hours, services like Netflix have a vastly larger library and Netflix supports HD discs right now. The Vudu box is priced at US$399.

Denon. Denon is upgrading their line of A/V receivers. These devices serve as a switching station and speaker management system for even a modest HDTV system. The problem most people face is that their HD video is fine, but the audio ends up on the TV speakers which are never really good. A device like the new Denon 2308CI serves as a switching center. HDMI 1.3 and component video and sound go in, and it then sends a single HDMI 1.3 signal out to the TV while driving up to seven speakers (7.1). This model will handle all audio formats up to the uncompressed HD audio formats, but there are higher end models that will do that too.

Yamaha Yamaha is also upgrading their mid range A/V receivers to include HDMI 1.3. The models 1800 and 3800 will replace the old 1700 and 2700. The Yamaha models are especially designed to keep the audio and video slaved together, called SCENE View, and make it easy to have a "one button" selection that manages the input source. Thatis welcome for some households where it would otherwise require an SR-71 class checklist to get all the sources, sound and video, all selected and synced.

The overall perception this reporter got was that HDTV technologies are in a very mature stage. While Steve Jobs declared that 2005 was the "year of HD," 2007 appears to be the sweet spot in time, prices, technical maturity, and source availability to finally make that big jump.

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