CES 2002

Day 2...

Las Vegas – 8th January: The second day of the show has closed its doors for the night, and we’re awaiting the third with impatience! After having wandered for miles in this immense trade show, we discovered, to our great pleasure, a few new "monsters" that will take the breath away from more than one Home Cinema fan.
Before venturing into the hardware jungle, I’ll stop just for a moment in order to inform you that the company DTS, which is engaged in a running battle with Dolby, is launching, for 2002, its sixth sample disc – à la carte - Jurassic Park 3, Rush Hour 2 and Moulin Rouge just to name a few. Not to mention THX who organised a news conference where they presented their first car audio "label", also announcing the upcoming release (for professionals only) of a Demo DVD with at least one new trailer.

But let’s get back to our onions. In the software section, it’s confirmed. The general utilisation of DTS and Dolby formats is now characterised. All the major brands propose, on their amplifiers, most of the new multi-channel sound formats. Pioneer and Panasonic are among the front-runners. It has to be said that they have, in their new catalogues, a whole stack of new gear… Five new amplifiers see the light of day, each equipped with 6.1, DTS, Neo Cinema/Music, 24/96 kHz as well as Dolby Prologic 2, Surround EX and AAC… the front panels are starting to look more like Christmas trees.

Some other major releases come from Marantz and Yamaha, with the latter launching a new range of top-line products. Exhibited on the New Technologies stand of the brand, we admired a magnificent 50" plasma mounted on glass, a digital amplifier and above all, a new DLP projector which will be placed under the DP-AX1.

I could ramble on for hours about this stuff, but prefer to let you look for yourself, via our photo reports, updated throughout the show.

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