CEDIA 2015 Show Report Day 2

CEDIA 2015 Show Report Day 2 Coverage

AudioControl had a bunch of exciting products at the show. Seen here is AudioControl’s CEO, Alex Camara giving an overview of some of their home theater products. I can say that the receiver on active display sounded clean and powerful. Plus all their products have excellent build quality.

James Loudspeaker was at the show and showing this remarkable product. In this video, Chris Doehla, describes their new in-walls. These are full-range in-wall speakers where the sound comes out of those tiny little grilles. How do they do that? I don’t know yet but I intend to find out. Needless to say, this type product would have a very high Spouse Acceptance Factor!

As promised, here is the video of Michael Greco giving a short rundown on Polk Audio’s newest addition to the Omni product line. These products are in the DTS Play-Fi universe. They are likewise cross-compatible with other brands predicated on this system and they interface with Apple Airplay too.

PSB was showing these powered all-weather speakers with full BluOS compatibility. They are very solidly built with a rugged mounting system that allows flexible mounting and swivel options for the user. They are bi-amped with 50 wpc built in amps. Claimed bass extension is down to 50 Hz which means they cover the full musical range.

Mark Levinson had quite a few of their new products at the show. Pictured here is the No. 585 integrated amplifier/DAC, fresh off an EISA Best Product Award for 2015 – 2016! I have one of these amps in my system now and I can say that it has proven to be a high quality addition in every sense of the word. Look for my review in the coming months.

GoldenEar had a large booth and private listening room at the show. This system had Dolby Atmos with 7 in-ceiling speakers. Three of these were angled to emulate the mid-height speakers in the Atmos spec. The effect was very convincing and was more than an excellent representation of the height cues embedded in the source material.

The system also featured GoldenEar’s newest product, the Super Sub XXL. My impression of this sub was quite favorable. The bass was deep, tight and low distortion. Just the way I like it! Of course, this was a show demo so it was probably louder than you would run it at home and this made gunshots sound a little surrealistic. I really loved the extended clip from a Star Wars video game, BTW!

Here are two other Polk Audio wireless streaming products. One is a preamp and the other has built in amplification. Polk claims these are broadly compatible with several other systems on the market so the consumer won’t be locked in to just one brand for their audio streaming needs!

This is a shot of Polk’s big system at the show. Dolby Atmos capability to be sure. I did sit here for some time, enjoying the demo.

My first stop this morning was in the Polk Audio booth. They have a new line of wireless streaming audio products that were outwardly very nicely built. This was a static display. I have a short video of these too that I will post later today. 

Bryston was showing a new lineup of entry level speakers. I will post a short video this evening that provides an overview of all their speaker offerings to include a new in wall model. 

DTS didn’t have a booth at the show but they were running demos in several locations. I saw one at JBL’s theater at Harman and came away impressed. Both movie and demo content was included but I most enjoyed the techno-music portion at the end which featured DTS:X. The system was running a 13.1.11 speaker setup which was completely room-tuned. If you’re wondering where to find the codec, I was informed that DTS has signed up 18 partners including every major manufacturer of receivers and processors. So pretty much anything that comes out in the next few months will include both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. And some of those will have Auro 3D processing as well.

As much as I love JVC projectors, I’ve always wished they could be just a bit brighter. They have the best contrast in the business but a little more output would be welcome. With six new models being introduced here at CEDIA, JVC has answered my (and I’d imagine many other people’s) wishes. The consumer models are labeled DLA-X550R, X750R and X950R. They’re rated at 1700, 1800 and 1900 lumens respectively which is a bump of around 40 percent. High native contrast is still there and the dynamic iris carries over too. HDMI inputs are version 2.0a which means they’ll handle the extra bandwidth requirements of HDR, 10-bit color and Ultra HD signals at 60Hz. They are also compatible with HDCP 2.2 so they’ll accept content from Ultra HD Blu-ray players and streaming devices without issue.

The imaging chips are the same as last year so they’re not natively Ultra HD just yet. But with JVC’s fourth-generation eShift technology, the image is shifted .5 pixels at 120Hz to create the illusion of higher resolution. And I can say from the demo I saw, it works extremely well. A DLA-X950R was set up with a 14-foot screen which I sat about eight feet back from. I could not see the pixel structure and native 4K content was especially tasty. Some of the clips I saw were also HDR and looked fantastic. A high-contrast display like this can really take advantage of the extra dynamic range present in HDR footage. I look forward to the day when it becomes a universal standard.

Pricing is a little lower than last year for the bottom two models. The DLA-X550R is $4000 and the X750R is $7000, both down $1000. The DLA-X950R which is made with hand-selected parts is still priced at $10,000.

Epson had two complete cinemas set up right on the show floor. On the first floor was the LS10000 laser projector which was introduced last year. It’s sporting a few minor updates like better panel alignment in the manufacturing process and new algorithms for their detail enhancement feature. The best news however, is that it’s no longer in limited distribution which means they’ll be sending me one for review in the next couple of weeks. I’ve been dying to check one of these out since last year’s CEDIA Expo. Look for a Secrets review of the LS10000 soon.

In the second-floor theater they had their new high-brightness Pro Cinema 4855WU set up. With 4000 lumens on tap it looked fantastic even when they turned the room lights on. Contrast doesn’t really suffer too much. Black levels aren’t what you’d see from a home theater model but they were respectable. I’ll be receiving a sample of that model in the coming weeks as well.

I started the day with an early press conference at LG’s booth where they showed several new OLED televisions. It’s hard to describe the depth of contrast I’m seeing here in a photograph. Suffice it to say that as a Pioneer Kuro owner, I’m stunned just like I was last year. If my PRO-111 ever dies, one of these LG screens will be its replacement.

Their line of OLED displays ranges in size from 55 to 98 inches. Prices start at $2499 for a 55-inch 1080p set and top out at $39,999 for the 98-inch Ultra HD display. Screens come in both curved and flat form factors and the more expensive ones support HDR content using the OpenHDR standard. Currently the only source for this is Amazon streaming. And it should be noted that HDR is ONLY supported via streaming. HDR from a connected source will require HDMI 2.0a and its extra bandwidth.

Read our full coverage from CEDIA 2015