HE2004
Every year I attend Primedia’s Home Entertainment
Shows, convinced that this is the year when it will live up to its billing. And it does --
sort of. There are multichannel displays, of course, and a smattering of exhibits
dedicated to video, but most of them seem like afterthoughts -- or, even worse, the
exhibitors just fail to get it.
What the HE Shows don’t get is how most of us actually
use TV and home theater in our daily lives. The majority of the video-oriented demos at
HE2004 offered gigantic systems of the "club the viewer-listener into
submission" category. That's a shame, because video is confusing right now -- a lot
of people attend the HE shows looking for answers to their problems, such as confusion
over TV standards and/or display technologies. That might be a narrow-minded point of view
when they could be ooohing and ahhing over the latest, greatest, most expensive
technology, but there you go.
Why is this so hard for exhibitors to understand? I suppose
someone might look at a gazillion-dollar HT system and think, Wow! If they can do that
for 60 grand, I bet they could do great stuff with the $4000 I have budgeted for my
system. But all I think is, I can't afford this.
This doesn't mean I don't like to see really big,
impressive systems. I simply want them to truly impress me -- or, even better, show me
something I can use myself.
The one monster demo that impressed me was put together by
Sound by Singer, and it was a head-turner: Bel Canto Design PRePro 7.1 ($6490 USD), two
Bel Canto Design eVo 2 amplifiers ($3290 each), two Bel Canto Design eVo 6 amplifiers
($4290 each), a Bel Canto Design PLayer universal disc player ($9490), a Runco VX-2c
three-chip HD DLP projector (price TBA), a Stewart FireHawk screen, a few miles of
Synergistic cable, and a whole suite of JMlab speakers: a Center Utopia Be ($6000 each),
and pairs of Alto Utopia Be’s ($17,000/pair), Diva Utopia Be’s ($11,500/pair),
and Sub Utopias ($6000 each).
This system had flawless video and superb sound -- not
always the case in such a huge room -- but more than that, it was the experience of
watching film that the Singer crew got so right. The video feature that culminated the
presentation was the scene from Seabiscuit in which jockey Red Pollard is
reflecting (in mid-race, no less) on the significance of that great horse. Yes, the
horses’ hooves thundered, but it was relatively subdued as big-system demos go. What
it also delivered was an intense emotional experience. You didn't have to know the
story or have seen the film or even like horse racing to get caught up in the action. For
three minutes you cared about these people, these events -- and it's a rare HT demo
that makes you care about anything. Way to go, guys.
JVC's D-ILA demo
Naim's room
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For sheer video spectacle, I have to doff my hat to JVC's
D-ILA demo, which was in many ways everything I hate about HE show video demonstrations.
There was almost no attempt to explain the technology or to even talk to the audience --
just an endless loop of prerecorded HD material, mostly Animal Planet network
documentaries, film clips from The Tonight Show, and a DVD of Shanghai Noon.
But it was the best darn image I saw at the whole show. I walked up to the gigantic screen
and examined the image from about 2" away -- and there were no visible pixels.
Okay, so the DLA-H2D2K on demo costs $30,000 -- but that
price includes Faroudja processing. That's still out of my reach, but the image was waaay
better than what I've seen at the last four movies I've watched in Academy theaters. I'm
hoping that means that eventually I'll be the beneficiary of some trickle-down technology.
A man can dream, can't he?
The best HT demo I saw was in the Naim room. It wasn't the
biggest or loudest or most expensive, it was simply a system that I could see myself
owning. It still would have busted my budget, but not by an order of magnitude. The system
consisted of a 50" Fujitsu LCD display and an all-Naim system: the brand-new DVD5 DVD
player (under $5000, price TBA), the AV2 preamp-processor ($4300), NAP 250 amps on the
main L/R speakers ($4250/pair), a NAP 200 amp for the center channel ($2550), and NAP 145s
($3350/pair) for the surrounds. The speakers were four SL2s ($8150/pair) and an Axess
center ($2250).
This system was scaled to a real-world living room, and
Naim had two fantastic DVDs to show it off: the Blue Man Group's The Complex Rock Tour
Live and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Those are about as
different from one another as you can get -- which is a good thing -- but what they have
in common is that both look and sound fan-fabu-tastic.
The Blue Man Group is crisp and eye-popping (ear-popping,
too), while Master and Commander is a lot more subtle -- in a matter of minutes, it
created a world that truly was on the far side of the world. I was so drawn in that I had
to force myself to leave the room to check out some more exhibits. That was duty -- what I
wanted was to see the whole movie from start to finish. That's what a demo is
supposed to do, of course, but darned few of 'em pull it off. Good show, chaps!
 Wouldn't you know, the
company that really seemed to get -- and to respond to -- what turns off so many
non-consumers to home theater was Monster Cable, which announced an "HT to Go"
one-brand solution to the typical home theater's décor-destroying mélange of styles.
Monster's M-Design products range from line-source speakers to hand-rubbed-lacquered audio
furniture, matching subwoofers, and even "action furniture."
Monster’s Eleganza StreamLine Tower Speaker System
uses a line array of up to 40 drivers in 5', 6', and 7' towers (prices range from $4499.95
to $5995.95/pair). The Eleganza center-channel ($1499.95), surrounds ($999.95/pair), and
InvisiSound Frames (speakers designed to complement flat-screen video displays, ranging in
price from $3999.95 to $6999.95/pair) all match the Towers. So, of course, do the Eleganza
subwoofers, which fit in corners (left- and right-facing versions are available): the
15"/1000W Godfather and the 12"/500W Bella.
And a sneaky touch I'm stunned no one has come up with
before now is Monster’s furniture-grade component rack with "invisible"
subwoofers: a pair of 10" drivers driven by 250Wpc amplifiers.
Will the M-Design line revolutionize home theater? Well,
stranger things have happened -- such as a company that sells "special"
hi-fi cables becoming one of the monster success stories of audio history. Compared to
that, producing a line of high-end HT components that actually fit in a normal family room
doesn't seem like such a stretch.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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