Big Picture Big Sound

At a press event in Denver during CEDIA Expo, Sony executives took some time to highlight their new $100 Million Dollar ad campaign, before getting into any details about products. The campaign is called "HDNA" as in "High Definition... It's in our DNA." Sony is positioning themselves as the seasoned expert in the high definition market, because, after all, who would want to buy expensive electronics equipment from an amateur?

After that, Chris Fawcett, vice president of product marketing, shared various stats to support Blu-ray's claimed dominance over HD-DVD in the ongoing next generation DVD format war. Of course, earlier that day Toshiba had spun different research to show that they were ahead in the battle. But in actuality, the battle for next gen format dominance is still very much up in the air, and may be for some time.


With all the rhetoric out of the way, Sony then walked us through new models of Blu-ray Disc players, home theater receivers and projectors as well as a unique new media server featuring a large internal hard drive plus Blu-ray Disc recording technology and a 200-disc CD/DVD/Blu-ray Disc changer. In keeping with the DNA theme, these products exhibit evolutionary advances in high definition video and audio technologies.


Joining the company's existing BDP-S300 Blu-ray Disc player, Sony unveiled a step-up BDP-S500 ($699) and their first ES (Elevated Standard) line Blu-ray Disc player, the BDP-S2000ES ($1299). Both models will pass next generation Dolby Digital and DTS audio formats via a bitstream over HDMI to compatible receivers and processors. Though, according to Sony reps, the DTS-HD bitstream support is for DTS-HD High Resolution audio only (not DTS-HD Master Audio). Both players also support 1080p/60fps (frames per second) as well as 1080p/24fps output to optimize the presentation of film-based or video-based source materials.


In their receiver line, Sony recently introduced three new ES models, the STR-DA3300ES ($999), STR-DA4300ES ($1299) and STR-DA5300ES ($1699) - all shipping in the September/October time frame. The two step-up models feature native decoding of Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD Master Audio, as well as legacy Dolby Digital and DTS bitstreams and multi-channel PCM. This makes them ideal companions for the new bitstream-compatible BD players. The STR-DA5300ES features a whopping six HDMI inputs, to satisfy even the most ardent of early adopters.


For the serious home theater aficionado, Sony introduced two new front projectors based on their latest 1080p SXRD (Silicon X-tal Reflective Display) - chips. The VPL-VW60 ($5,000, September) and VPL-VW200 ($15,000, October) both feature 24p True Cinema technology for better reproduction of film-based sources.


The newly enhanced SXRD chip features wire grid polarizers and high contrast plates that more than double the previous native contrast ratio. When combined with Sony's Advanced Iris technology, the panels help to deliver a a rated 35,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. The VPL-VW60 model also features improved brightness of 1,000 ANSI Lumens (100 Lumens more than its predecessor).

Both projectors can accept an external anamorphic lens (sold separately) that, when paired with Sony's Anamorphic zoom mode, allows users to watch cinemascope films in their native aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on compatible screens. The more expensive VPL-VW200 projector also has new high frame rate SXRD (120 FPS) panels and offers three motion compensation modes. These enable users to adapt performance based on content for the best possible motion reproduction and picture quality with moving images. Demos out on the show floor showed these products both offer rich, detailed images, when viewed in controlled lighting. The VPL-VW50 and VPL-VW100 were no slouches in the picture department, but these may indeed be even better.

The product that got the most oohs and aahs, however, was their advanced Home Entertainment Server, the HES-V1000 ($3499), which features a 200-disc CD/DVD/BD changer as well as Blu-ray Disc read/write capability (yes, that's right, it can burn Blu-ray Discs). Its standard 500GB hard disc drive can store up to 137 hours of video, 40,000 songs or 20,000 digital photos.

The server can distribute mixed media content (audio, video or pictures) to multiple zones or rooms wirelessly or via a wired ethernet connection. Its integrated "x-Application" software menu is inspired by the "Xross Media Bar," used by the PSP, PlayStation 3 and recent Sony receivers. The server is expected to be available in October at Sony dealers, Sony Style stores and online at SonyStyle.com

At the end of the day, with the proliferation of 1080p software and hardware, the introduction of next generation audio support in Sony's and other manufacturer's Blu-ray and HD-DVD players, as well as compatible receivers from Sony (and others) to decode these bitstreams, the time to buy a home theater receiver is upon us, and the time to pick a high definition disc format and player is as well (or just do what we did, and buy one of each).