This year's CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association) convention and show at Indianapolis was an interesting showcase for HDTV. CEDIA is like a miniature CES (Consumer Electronics Show) with virtually all of the major industry television brands showing their latest and greatest technology to the attendees. CEDIA attendees represent the very vibrant consumer installation business. Their customers demand quality installation and products and are willing to pay the price. As a result, products shown at CEDIA represent manufacturers' highest end and most esoteric offerings. In many ways CEDIA is a precursor to the following year's CES, giving us an "advanced preview" of upcoming products. As anticipated, the star of the show was 1080p, with all of the majors (except Panasonic) demonstrating 1080p, using various technologies.(Panasonic has decided to focus addressing the CEDIA market with plasma technology, with 1080p coming in the future. DLP 1080p was most ubiquitous with several manufacturers showing products based on the new DLP 1080p technology. I won't waste your time discussing pricing, marketing and positioning. But generally, as anticipated, one can initially expect to pay an additional retail premium of 20 - 25% for models with the consumer version of the DLP 1080p chips. While the high-performance commercial DLP front projection units employ three separate 1920 x 1080 panels, the consumer versions of the DLP 1080p technology operate somewhat differently. Essentially, the light engine divides each frame into two sub-frames, with each sub-frame composed of half of the pixels required of a full 1920 x 1080 display. An electro-mechanical toggling mirror arrangement, synchronized with the appearance of each sub-frame, sequentially "builds" a full 1920 x 1080p display. The viewer's eye performs the integration much like occurs with the sequential images from the color wheel. The result is a very cost-effective, high performing single chip solutions for 1080p displays. So, how does it look? Very good. Interestingly, one of the by-products of this new technology and its applied circuitry is a significant reduction of picture noise and artifacts compared with the 720p versions. This is important for two reasons: First, although most picture noise is not visible at normal viewing distances,it is resolved and interpreted by the eye as loss of resolution. Secondly, since virtually all sales conversations on the sales room floor occur within two feet of the displayed set, it is very easy to see and/or demonstrate the benefit of lower noise displays. But DLP 1080p, while very good, was not the best. The best by any measurement was the SONY SXRD technology. SXRD is essentially a highly refined version of LcOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) technology. Sony has (evidently) succeeded is overcoming the LcOS very critical production challenges to offer a very high performance and cost-effective design, letting all the inherent benefits of LcOS technology to be showcased. LcOS is a type of LCD application in which the incoming light to the panel is polarized, passed through a very thin liquid crystal layer and reflected from an aluminum mirror. Drivers located under or on the edge of the panel deliver a charge to each pixel, causing the polarization of the liquid crystal to change, thereby varying the amount of light exiting each panel pixel. The SXRD refinements of the basic LcOS technology optimize the inherent light modulation and throughput efficiencies of this technology. The result is a high contrast, artifact free, bright high- resolution image. Couple this with the many light engine driver refinements, and you have a real HDTV winner. It is getting better. Ed