Sound + Image February - March 2015

Back in my home country, oop north in the other Hemisphere, the gloomy months from December through to February are marked by long nights where you leave for work in the dark, come home in the dark, and spend your evenings in the dark with the telly on. The winter nights are, therefore, something of a TV fest, and I still remember the excitement of the Christmas and New Year double issues of the Radio Times and TV Times being wedged through the letterbox by the local newsagent to slap on the mat, and the family going through them to put Biro rings around all the shows we’d watch over that festive fortnight. Imagine if we’d been told there would be no TV at all for those crucial dark weeks.…

Were this not from Devialet, we might be inclined to dismiss the fantastic claims of the Phantom. “Phantom on its own will replace your stereo systems, speakers, docking stations and home cinema. It exceeds them at least 1000 times in terms of sound quality” reads one section of the product guide… we don’t even know what they mean by multiples of sound quality. Guess we’ll have to hear it when the first units reach Australia around May/June. But what is this product giving rise to such outrageous assertions? The Devialet Phantom is a wireless speaker. It contains a wireless receiver, internal amplification and loudspeakers. At its heart is the ‘ADH’ (Analog/Digital Hybrid) amplification as used in Devialet’s remarkable stereo amplifiers, parallelling low-wattage Class A with high-power Class D to deliver…

NEW-TECH, NEW SHOW... If you’re anticipating the 2015 Australian Audio & AV Show, know that this year the show heads to Sydney but has expanded to cover a wider range of technology in addition to the audio and AV spheres. Now titled ‘New-Tech 15’, it promises interactive exhibits, high-end audio sound lounges, home cinema and home entertainment demonstrations, the finest in digital photo imaging, new science and technology, satellite navigation, mobile/in-car entertainment, eco-friendly and leisure technologies — a show for all the family and for all ages. Here at NextMedia we are again media partners for the show, which takes place from July 31 to August 2nd 2015 at Sydney Olympic Park in the new Hall 5 at the Sydney Show Ground. Visit www.chestergroup.org  for more details and,…

The Blu-ray Disc Association continues to promise that the industry is “on track” to deliver new Blu-ray players capable of delivering 4K content by the end of 2015. The new standard has, at the time of press, still yet to be finalised, although Panasonic anticipated the specification by showing prototype players at CES. But Victor Matsuda, who is VP of Blu-ray at Sony America and also the BDA’s global promotions committee chair, has given interesting confirmation of various inclusions and exclusions that should make it through to market. The new players will play a new breed of Blu-ray Disc by more than doubling their existing data delivery rate from the current level of around 40Mbps up to 108Mbps data delivery from dual-layer discs and up to 128Mbps from triple-layer ones.…

Here’s a strange tangle that LG Electronics has found itself in — on the one hand it rushed out an announcement of its first ‘quantum dot’ TV (above) just before CES, thereby pipping rival Samsung’s CES launch at the post. But ever since, LG has been at pains to explain why we shouldn’t get too excited about quantum dots, because OLED is the far better screen technology. The reasoning is fairly obvious — LG is streets ahead of all its rivals with large-panel OLED, in particular achieving higher yield rates (i.e. lower fail rates) that have allowed it to price everyone else out of the market. But pricing still remains high compared with large-panel LCDs, even with LG.Display’s new OLED production line (E4) now on line in the ROK. So…

The annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is the key venue for consumer electronics manufacturers to lay the groundwork for their 2015 releases, and to reach for the headlines with any new technologies they’re ready to reveal even in prototype forms. Ultra High Definition (4K) was the must-have screen format, and with LG having cornered the market in OLED (see p13), the race was on to show how LCD televisions can compete. Sharp’s 8K and better 4K Japan’s broadcasters, led as ever by NHK, have been developing 8K resolution for some years. At CES Sharp showcased an 85-inch 8K LCD display prototype, the world’s first to be compliant with the DVB-EBU standards including 120Hz native refresh rate, BT.2020 colour gamut and 12-bit depth, and of course 8K resolution of…