CEDIA Expo: 1080p TVs Start Shipping
Posted by Alan Stafford | Friday, September 09, 2005 6:12 PM PT
Despite the fact that you can't actually find
1080 progressive television content, almost every major TV manufacturer was showing some type of 1080p set here at the
CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis.
One vendor put the best spin on the situation; he said you'll want to buy one to "future-proof" your TV. Right--you wouldn't want to be caught with a lowly 1080 interlaced set when content does become available, right?
Like most of the new 1080p sets, Hewlett-Packard's new $4999 65-inch set (shown above) and 58-inch set (the price of which the rep I talked to didn't know) are DLP micro displays. The rep said that the new chips use the same number of mirrors as the older 1080i chips, but by using an HP technology called "Wobulation," a resolution-doubling technology in which pixels of light overlay other pixels, it can generate 1080p images. (Sounds like HP has a little smoke to go with the mirrors, but it's not alone).
Oh, two nice things about the HP sets: All the connections are in the front of the set, behind a fold-down panel (you can run your permanent cables through the chassis to these connectors), and another panel behind the one I just mentioned covers a user-changeable lamp--so you don't have to call a service rep to do it. Leave it to a PC manufacturer to enable such a revolutionary concept as letting you change your own light bulb.
Hey Alan,
fyi - RCA has been making its DLP product with customer changeable bulbs for the last 3 years. I wouldn't be so quick to give HP so much credit for being a revolutionary.
Kris
I didn't know about the RCA sets, but I didn't mean to imply HP was the first. It just annoys me that so many manufacturers build their sets to please their retailers, who can make a buck down the line by simply changing a bulb. We're often so concerned about how much bulbs cost and how long they last simply because--by design, it seems to me--that manufacturers make it so difficult to replace them.