I attended my son’s back-to-school night at his high school this week, and to my surprise found a front projector set up in every one of his classrooms. Granted, these were business-type projectors, not really designed or appropriate for home theater use. But even so, I was impressed on a couple of different levels.

First, at the risk of sounding ancient, I remember copying notes that my teacher wrote with chalk on a blackboard, risking eye strain, white lung disease, and the dreaded nails-on-the-chalkboard sound at 10 kHz. So purely from an educational perspective, watching a powerpoint or graphics presentation on a big screen has to enhance the learning experience.

Second, from a home theater enthusiast perspective, it’s nice to expose our youth to the benefits of watching content (even educational content!) on a huge screen, rather than a three-inch video on computer from Youtube or on their iPod. Maybe in another five or ten years, when those high schoolers start looking at setting up their own home theaters, they’ll remember those front projectors from the classroom and think, “hey, one of those will work really well at my place.”

Now that the buzz from CEDIA has faded (and I mean that in a metaphorical, not physiological sense), I realized it’s tough to draw any dramatic conclusions or mega-trends from the show. There is still a market for high-end, price is no object equipment. Consumers are getting tremendous value on the end other of the spectrum from trickle-down technology. Front projector manufacturers continue to tweak their products, and lower the entry-level price point for 1080p. In-wall and in-ceiling speakers are here to stay. IPod/iPhone integration products are everywhere. The PS3 still seems to be the Blu-ray player of choice, although many are looking forward to the new Oppo.

If anything struck me, it was that even at a time of economic uncertainty, attendees were still passionate about their products and the home theater world in general.  Stopping at booths, talking to reps and just people watching, it is obvious that the industry is filled with men and women who love the audio-video experience. I have a few friends outside the business who can relate to it, but put 25,000 professionals all in the same place, and you find yourself in a bar very late at night talking about the variables in subjective speaker evaluations.  And at the end of a long day, that’s what makes our world go around.

 “T.H.E. Show” has for the last couple of years taken space near CEDIA very much as they have each year in Las Vegas for CES. Although not very large at all and predominately known as a 2-channel show, this year it was held at the Denver Athletic Club a mere two blocks from the convention center.

A modest show with 3 rooms it included; Martin Logan, Magnepan, Audio Research, Professional Home Cinema, 3LCD, Stewart Filmscreens, Ayre Acoustics, and more.

At the time of my arrival the Magnapan room shared with Audio Research was unavailable with a photo shoot which left the Martin Logan/Ayre Acoustics/ASC room my first demo and what a delight. Martin Logan’s new CLX electrostatic speakers which start around $20,000/pair, visually dominated the space painted in bright red.

The CLX is a 57” curvilinear line source with a double diaphragm. They delivered delicate, clean and a rich dynamics, all through some awesome components from Ayre including a pair of MX-R mono amplifiers. The highly respected C-5xe universal player and the new K-1 preamplifier delivered an elegant presentation.

I walked into a full-throttle surround sound demonstration with PHC, Professional Home Cinema rocking the room. Ironically enough, they are known for some very large hulking speakers that look and sound like they could easily fill a commercial theater. Thousands of watts of power and a beautiful picture care of a Digital Projection on a Stewart Filmscreen showed the absolute best a home theater can sound.

Attendance overall at CEDIA this year was down but exhibitors at T.H.E. Show were enthusiastic about the crowds filling their rooms and anticipate it growing, so look for them in Atlanta next year!

I had a great time attending CEDIA this year.  The pacing of it was very relaxed and the show floor wasn’t that crowded.  In fact, most of the manufacturers were pretty calm about things and they simply showed off their latest iterations of products that raised the bar on quality or lowered the price to the consumer through efficiencies and cost savings in the manufacturing process. 

Blu-ray, having been the declared winner of the format war that was still right in the middle of its battle during CES didn’t have an elaborate booth to show off BD-Live or Bonus view with and there was merely a section of the Sony booth displaying a few informational placards here and there.  Blu-ray was the defacto standard at the show for displaying high detail content though as many booths used a Playstation 3 or some stand alone player to show off their displays or screens.  I was a bit amused during a press conference when Sony announced a 400 disc mega changer in the works.  Certainly the price of Blu-ray media will have to come down a ways before a product like that will become attractive.  In fact, some manufacturers such as Toshiba weren’t ready to buy in to Blu-ray just yet as they thought that it represented only a small piece of the pie and other forms of receiving content such as via high speed downloads would compete for just as much attention in the near future.

There were a lot of other cool products to see at the show though but not many of them were heading into new frontier.  Most of the manufacturers were releasing products that kept up with the latest technologies such as the latest lossless sound codecs or the latest trends such as in-wall speakers or subs.  There were a few exceptions to this such as Mitsubishi’s booth which had a demonstration of their 3d technology present in their DLP displays.   I found it to be very novel while playing video games to see the hero character virtually hover in front of me as he hacked and slashed away at the three dimensional ghouies that seemed to float in mid air.   During movies though, my eyes would often lose focus while looking through the specialized 3d glasses and it often became a strain to continue watching not to mention that I often became distracted with annoying characters that I wanted to reach out and squash.  Still, it’s something new and different and Mits gets the kudos for that.  Dolby and Audysssey also definitely get the thumbs up for their dynamic volume technologies that give regular listening levels that much more punch without disturbing the other residents of our domains.  At least half of my listening is done way below reference levels and these features are a welcome addition as they also handle abrupt changes in volumes between source material such as a broadcast movie and a noisy used car commercial.

Alas, the most enjoyable aspect of this CEDIA for myself was corresponding with all of the people who make up this industry.  Whether it be the awesome group from Paradigm who always push the envelope in quality and features, Ron Stimpson from SVS who is passionate about getting consumers great products at great prices, Jason Liao from Oppo who is determined to deliver the best player to value ratio, or all the others who I am failing to mention, these are great people who love this stuff and continue to bring it to market year after year.