On
Thursday April 26th, Casablanca was shown across the country at select
theaters using Digital Cinema grade projectors. I was very excited to catch
this event at our local Island 16 theater in Holtsville, New York, which is
outfitted with Sony's latest 4K SXRD Digital Cinema projector, which is
basically a very large 4K resolution LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) projector.
I was expecting a true 4K resolution presentation via a server as my understanding
is this film and many others have been archived in the new 4K format.
Unfortunately, the source was a 1080p DishNetwork satellite broadcast distributed
by Fathom Events.
Pros: Very good calibration features for
tweaking and setup. CMS feature works very well to fine tune colors to be very
close to the Rec 709 specification. Grayscale and gamma performance are
excellent post calibration.
Cons: Off angle viewing is very poor. Black
field uniformity is a little splotchy. Cyan tracking below 50% luminance levels
skews toward blue similar to the Elite models.
To Buy or Not to Buy: With a street price of well under 3K,
and a screen size of 70-inches, this panel has a lot of bang for the buck. A
full array LED backlit panel with good black level performance, the LC-70LE735U
can be calibrated to a high degree of accuracy, and is capable of producing
very good pictures. Hard to beat for the money.
On the odd chance your TV was disabled during the second week of January
and you missed the evening news during that half-fortnight, C.E.S. is the
Consumer Electronics Show held annually in the city of conspicuous power
consumption, Las Vegas, Nevada.
I subscribe to almost every publication
targeted at the Home Theatre arena, both on-line and hardcopies. The objective,
obviously, is to try to stay current with new developments and maybe spot a
trend or two, before the next guy. As I peruse late November material I can't
help but spot an annual and apparently immutable trend to offer Christmas gift
ideas to Home Theaterites (yes, I'm licensed to make up new words whenever I
feel like it).
For the fourth year in a row now, Value Electronics presented a Flat
Panel Shootout where I was a presenter. The panel contestants were the
Panasonic TC-P65VT30 plasma, the Samsung PN59D8000 plasma, the LG 60PZ950
plasma, the Samsung UN60D8000 edge lit LED, Sony XBR55HX929, and the Elite PRO-60X5FD.
Every year at
the annual CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design & Installation Association)
Expo, CEDIA bestows their Life Achievement Award on a deserving member of our
industry. This year that coveted award went to Don Stewart, one of the partners
of Stewart Filmscreen, a leading front and rear projection screen manufacturer.