By Greg Tarr
Reposted from TWICE Magazine.

Chula Vista, Calif. — Hitachi Home Electronics (America) will celebrate the delivery of its 1.5 UltraThin LCD TV series to retailers during its annual dealer show here this week.

During the event the company plans to showcase the line, which made its formal debut at International CES last January.

The sets are marketed under the 1.5 trademark to denote the ultra-thin cabinet depth, which measures 1.5 inches. Hitachi is now marketing the sets through select CE retailers and specialty A/V dealers nationwide.

UltraThin models are available in four screen sizes 32, 37, 42 and 47 inches. To achieve the narrow cabinet depth, the sets incorporate a patented ventilation technology to the backlight, power supply and crystal frame. The styling design is said to have been influenced by achievements in areas as diverse as automotive design, server systems and optical R&D. The design extends 360 degrees around the set, offering a clean lines and distinctive aesthetics from all angles, the company said.

Hitachi also revealed pricing, key feature sets and availability for 1.5 models in the Director’s series (X) and Ultra Vision (V) lines are as follows after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

By CHRIS WILLIAMS
Associated Press Writer

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In Brent Swanson’s basement home theater, there should be nothing drab about “Battlestar Galactica.” He’s got a high-end projector that beams the picture onto a wall painted like a silver screen, and speakers loom in the corners, flanking two big subwoofers.

Yet when he tuned in Sci Fi HD for a recent episode filmed in high definition, the image was soft and the darkest parts broke up into large blocks with no definition. Explosions, he said, were just dull.

“It kind of looked like they took the standard definition and just blew it up,” said Swanson, a 33-year-old graphic designer and videographer who subscribes to Comcast Corp.’s TV service. “I couldn’t really tell if what I was seeing was really better than what I saw on regular television.”

As cable TV companies pack ever more HD channels into limited bandwidth, some owners of pricey plasma, projector and LCD TVs are complaining that they’re not getting the high-def quality they paid for. They blame the increased signal compression being used to squeeze three digital HD signals into the bandwidth of one analog station.

Read More on the AP Wire.

Greetings readers. Our sincerest apologies for the downtime experienced in the last two weeks. A major infrastructure problem at the datacenter where the myHTSA Community site was hosted caused major outages and other problems we were stuck in the audience for, helpless to do anything but watch the repair on our HD screens.

Everything has since been fixed. Thanks again for your patience!

I was visiting an acquaintance the other night. I don’t dare call him a friend yet. Keep reading and you’ll find out why!

After dinner, this acquaintance invited me downstaors to see his “home theater.” Let me say that I am always excited to see what makes others excited, and I am not one of those “snobbish” type of people who will chastize you for owning cars, gear or anything else that is less than your perceived value in the social marketplace.

I am however, blunt, if not honest and the first thing I noticed, as most people do, was a rather large TV. 73″ Big Screen TV, which was more than adequate for a room this size. The problem became noticeable only when he started a movie. The audio was horrible! The only thing running through my mind was HOW could this have happened to this poor man?

He finished this rather loud, distorted and hollow sounding demo and said “What do you think? Awesome Huh?” I Hate Conflict and as such will go to great lengths to avoid it, so I said “Yes, it sure was.” With that, I asked him if he would have time to stop over and see my home theater anytime soon and we had lunch the following day.

I took him downstairs and had a 100″ front projector hooked up through my California Audio Labs amplifiers and Soliloquy Loudspeakers. I played him a demonstration of the 100″ projector, but I used a cheesy home theater in a box type of loudspeaker and receiver package. At the end of the demo he asked “was that projector set-up expensive?” “Of course” I told him, “but it’s worth it isn’t it?” He said “Yes” and then I asked him if he had one more minute to hear something really cool?

I connected the 13″ monitor I had stashed for sporting events on multiple channels, to a DVD player and ran the digital audio out of the DVD to the big audio system. I played the same demo, but this time the result was significantly different! My now friend Jim exclaimed: “Holy Expletive! That was one kickass demo!” I replied: “you didn’t mind the small TV?” He said: “just a little.

I said: “that’s beacuse you haven’t used your imagination in a while! In the past your imagination is what painted the visual image and the better the sound and atmosphere, the more real those images became.”

When music was just two channels, we had to use our imagination to paint an image in our minds of what we really wanted to experience or thought we were hearing. When sound became multi-channel it immersed us further into the experience and we had to use our imagination less. Finally, we added High Definition images that are extremely large and our imagination went away.

It is important to remember that audio products are more than 70% of the overall experience and the core of your budget should be allocated here. Talk with someone who knows good audio and don’t sacrifice their just to get a bigger picture. Don’t stop using your imagination!

So far this year we have had 16 placements run in print and on the Web, and have 20 more in the works. Thanks for all the support from you and your members!

Read the March 2008 PR Update (Word DOC)