Joined
·
196 Posts
I attended the NYC Home Entertainment Expo sponsored by Stereophile yesterday, Thursday, May 30. This was the pre-general public day for press (not me), industry (still cold), and advance ticket holders (getting warm). Thus I mostly beat the crowds, got to hobnob with industry giants, and look important. Ahh...power.
Let me preface my comments with a major caveat: this kind of event is quite possibly the worst, most unreliable way to evaluate HT hardware, especially projectors: the rooms are noisy, uncomfortable, and mostly blighted by ambient light and other anomalies. The venues are also usually too small to show the units at their biggest and best. And the manufacturer reps often have only a semi-clue as to what they're supposed to do to make them li'l doo-hickeys work. That said, here are my completely unreliable, fallible, and error-prone informal observations. (If you're unwise enough to base any buying decisions on these comments, there's this bridge I happened to pass by in NYC yesterday...)
First, the new Plus Piano: the HE-3200. As a Piano owner, as many of you know, I'm biased--I love the thing to death. Upon entering the tiny Plus room tucked away in a corner on the seventh floor, I proudly announced my ownership status, and was feted by the lovely Japanese rep (who continually bowed to me--another customer benefit) with a treasure trove of Piano trinkets: a replica (as the rep kept emphasizing, I suppose to prevent my hawking it over by the men's rooms) of the DLP chip, and a key chain with a tiny little Piano hanging on it (only slightly runtier than the real thing), with a push-button LED light where the lens is supposed to be. Adorable isn't the word. Here are the important warnings on the enclosed label for your reading pleasure (Warning: dont read if you're easily frightened):
Piano Key Chain Holder w/LED Light!
- Press the button at the bottom of the keychain to active the LED Light
- Avoid Exposure: Do NOT Project LED light into eyes!
- Caution: Keyholder is tiny and can be swalloded by children!
- Caution: Do not use under water!
Made in China
Damn...this thing is more hazardous than Happy Fun Ball. And there go my plans to use it as a bathtub toy. Oh, well...
Oh, yes...the projector.
Well, frankly I didn't see any eye-opening differences vis-a-vis the current Piano. Which, in my view, is all to the good: they haven't gone and ruined what was already a great piece of work. Source material was a film (I don't know what it was...I lose track of movies later than Ben-Hur [the silent version]), via PC and downcoverted by the pj from HD. Looked like a nice DVD looks on the old unit. My conclusion is that while it's good to have the ability to input an HD signal, the attractive but non-wow-inducing result only proves how good the downscaling is: you can't compensate for those lost pixels no matter what. HD is HD, and this ain't it.
The light engine remains the same. Rep agrees that more light is a potential negative--it washes out the blacks. Zoom lens? We don't need no steenkin' zoom lens!
Now here's the good news: the original Piano will still be sold at a reduced price of $2,699. (Well, good for you. For me, no rebate. Hey, I tried!) Better yet, they're offering it for the weekend at a special show price of $2,499. See you at the Hilton!
I got the sense (and I'm only speculating here) that the changes in the Piano were not made so much because of any manufacturer reservations about the unit's performance, but rather in response to common public criticisms, particularly vis-a-vis the InFocus LS110. At an MSRP of $3,300, the new Piano places itself squarely in competition with the InFocus in everything but light output. As for the old unit, at that price it's a steal.
As for the other DLP's, I got a chance to see the Seleco SIM2, the aforementioned InFocus, and the Sharp 9000. I must honestly tell you that none looked significantly better than the Piano, and the Sharp looked especially unimpressive. The rep claimed the real HD demo material hadn't arrived, so they were showing some dreadful race car stuff that looked washed out and greenish in hue. The SIM2 and InFocus demos--the latter actually two rooms, a smaller and a bigger one, with the projector beaming at different size screens--were similarly off-color (performance, not filmic content), which brings me to my next point.
I don't pretend to be a technical expert or ISF color guru or anything, but every single projector I saw looked significantly off color-wise, and all seemed skewed toward the green end. Since this coincides with the bias of most of the bulbs used in these DLP's, I've got to think many of the reps simply didn't know how to use the picture settings to extract the best performance out of their units. There wasn't an accurate fleshtone within shouting distance of any of these demos, and I know for a fact that the pj's in question have the means. Can't anybody SEE?
Anyway, the InFocus rep did provide a useful explanation of the difference between "home entertainment" and "home theater" (jeez, thanks for that) and the Sharp demo proved that yes, it is possible to completely bury your flagship product in an overly well-lit corner with ding-dong source material. I mean, come on, this is New York. Take a walk over to Tower and pick up a copy of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." It sure would've been more impressive than that race car thing, and significantly more appealing to our sophisticated cosmopolitan sensibilities.
I will say that all the manufacturers' reps were very polite (non-snooty) and tried to be helpful, particularly when dealing with some of the inane questions from the peanut gallery ("What kind of stretching mechanism does this unit have?"). That was probably one of the writers from SGHT.
More as (or if) I think of it. My mind is clouded as is: it's almost 3 a.m., and I just got finished digesting an 11:30 yesterday morning spectacular, steaming hot, soft-as-butter Carnegie Deli corned beef on rye (yes, BETTER than sex) and re-watching the second season of the Sopranos on my beautiful Plus Piano. Ahhhhhh...life is good.
Let me preface my comments with a major caveat: this kind of event is quite possibly the worst, most unreliable way to evaluate HT hardware, especially projectors: the rooms are noisy, uncomfortable, and mostly blighted by ambient light and other anomalies. The venues are also usually too small to show the units at their biggest and best. And the manufacturer reps often have only a semi-clue as to what they're supposed to do to make them li'l doo-hickeys work. That said, here are my completely unreliable, fallible, and error-prone informal observations. (If you're unwise enough to base any buying decisions on these comments, there's this bridge I happened to pass by in NYC yesterday...)
First, the new Plus Piano: the HE-3200. As a Piano owner, as many of you know, I'm biased--I love the thing to death. Upon entering the tiny Plus room tucked away in a corner on the seventh floor, I proudly announced my ownership status, and was feted by the lovely Japanese rep (who continually bowed to me--another customer benefit) with a treasure trove of Piano trinkets: a replica (as the rep kept emphasizing, I suppose to prevent my hawking it over by the men's rooms) of the DLP chip, and a key chain with a tiny little Piano hanging on it (only slightly runtier than the real thing), with a push-button LED light where the lens is supposed to be. Adorable isn't the word. Here are the important warnings on the enclosed label for your reading pleasure (Warning: dont read if you're easily frightened):
Piano Key Chain Holder w/LED Light!
- Press the button at the bottom of the keychain to active the LED Light
- Avoid Exposure: Do NOT Project LED light into eyes!
- Caution: Keyholder is tiny and can be swalloded by children!
- Caution: Do not use under water!
Made in China
Damn...this thing is more hazardous than Happy Fun Ball. And there go my plans to use it as a bathtub toy. Oh, well...
Oh, yes...the projector.
Well, frankly I didn't see any eye-opening differences vis-a-vis the current Piano. Which, in my view, is all to the good: they haven't gone and ruined what was already a great piece of work. Source material was a film (I don't know what it was...I lose track of movies later than Ben-Hur [the silent version]), via PC and downcoverted by the pj from HD. Looked like a nice DVD looks on the old unit. My conclusion is that while it's good to have the ability to input an HD signal, the attractive but non-wow-inducing result only proves how good the downscaling is: you can't compensate for those lost pixels no matter what. HD is HD, and this ain't it.
The light engine remains the same. Rep agrees that more light is a potential negative--it washes out the blacks. Zoom lens? We don't need no steenkin' zoom lens!
Now here's the good news: the original Piano will still be sold at a reduced price of $2,699. (Well, good for you. For me, no rebate. Hey, I tried!) Better yet, they're offering it for the weekend at a special show price of $2,499. See you at the Hilton!
I got the sense (and I'm only speculating here) that the changes in the Piano were not made so much because of any manufacturer reservations about the unit's performance, but rather in response to common public criticisms, particularly vis-a-vis the InFocus LS110. At an MSRP of $3,300, the new Piano places itself squarely in competition with the InFocus in everything but light output. As for the old unit, at that price it's a steal.
As for the other DLP's, I got a chance to see the Seleco SIM2, the aforementioned InFocus, and the Sharp 9000. I must honestly tell you that none looked significantly better than the Piano, and the Sharp looked especially unimpressive. The rep claimed the real HD demo material hadn't arrived, so they were showing some dreadful race car stuff that looked washed out and greenish in hue. The SIM2 and InFocus demos--the latter actually two rooms, a smaller and a bigger one, with the projector beaming at different size screens--were similarly off-color (performance, not filmic content), which brings me to my next point.
I don't pretend to be a technical expert or ISF color guru or anything, but every single projector I saw looked significantly off color-wise, and all seemed skewed toward the green end. Since this coincides with the bias of most of the bulbs used in these DLP's, I've got to think many of the reps simply didn't know how to use the picture settings to extract the best performance out of their units. There wasn't an accurate fleshtone within shouting distance of any of these demos, and I know for a fact that the pj's in question have the means. Can't anybody SEE?
Anyway, the InFocus rep did provide a useful explanation of the difference between "home entertainment" and "home theater" (jeez, thanks for that) and the Sharp demo proved that yes, it is possible to completely bury your flagship product in an overly well-lit corner with ding-dong source material. I mean, come on, this is New York. Take a walk over to Tower and pick up a copy of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." It sure would've been more impressive than that race car thing, and significantly more appealing to our sophisticated cosmopolitan sensibilities.
I will say that all the manufacturers' reps were very polite (non-snooty) and tried to be helpful, particularly when dealing with some of the inane questions from the peanut gallery ("What kind of stretching mechanism does this unit have?"). That was probably one of the writers from SGHT.
More as (or if) I think of it. My mind is clouded as is: it's almost 3 a.m., and I just got finished digesting an 11:30 yesterday morning spectacular, steaming hot, soft-as-butter Carnegie Deli corned beef on rye (yes, BETTER than sex) and re-watching the second season of the Sopranos on my beautiful Plus Piano. Ahhhhhh...life is good.
