At CEDIA Expo in Atlanta last month, Krell was sharing a corner of SIM2's booth to talk about and show off their new and upcoming products. Krell's Patrick Bresnahan recently re-joined the company, and was enthusiastic about its products, and its prospects. A part of his excitement stems from new management: former director of global sales and marketing, Bill McKiegan was recently promoted to president, and Patrick thinks he's the right man for the job: "Bill is a no-nonsense kind of guy, just what Krell needs right now." When asked about company founders, Dan and Rondi D'Agostino, Bresnahan said they were no longer involved with the company.
Under this new management, the company is preparing to ship their first Blu-ray player, the Evolution 555 (MSRP: $15,000). It is expected to begin shipping in December. Although it will not be 3D-capable out of the gate, it will be field upgradeable to support Blu-ray 3D at some point in the near future. "Pricing hasn't been finalized yet, but we believe the 3D upgrade will be somewhere in the $1,500 range," said Bresnahan. Apparently the processors and hardware support the additional bandwidth and calculations required to enter the third dimension.
When showing off samples of the Evolution 555, Bresnahan opened up the hood and made a point of showing what was not there. "Notice how none of those chips or parts say 'OPPO' on them," said Bresnahan. OPPO is well known for their high value, high performance Blu-ray players, and it seems like every other ultra high-end manufacturer is using OPPO's BDP-83 as the foundation of their own super-expensive players. One manufacturer (Lexicon) is actually doing a lot more than that, with an entire OPPO BDP-83 wrapped up in a billet aluminum chassis, and re-badged as their own (at seven times the price).
Rather than borrowing another manufacturer's complete design, Krell has designed the player themselves, cherry-picking best-of-breed parts to handle each function. Sigma Designs got the nod for the video processor, with the 12-bit VXP processor on board to handle upconversion, de-interlacing and other video-related heavy lifting. A Sigma Designs rep says that the player will include their SMP8644 media processor and GF9452 VXP video processor. The player supports a vertical stretch mode for eliminating the black bars from Cinemascope content, for use in Constant Image Height (CIH) front projection systems.
Instead of wasting money (!?) and complicating the design with a multi-channel analog output, Krell assumes that the unit will be used with an HDMI-capable processor to handle audio, so the 555's analog outputs are strictly two-channel with all the good stuff (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, etc.) sent over the HDMI digital output. If you pair it with a Krell processor, you'll be able to see (and hear) the advantage of Krell's proprietary CAST (Current Audio Signal Transfer) technology, which optimizes the sound by synchronizing the components in the current domain.
With 1 gigabyte of on-board storage, and a built-in Ethernet port, the 555 will support BD-Live and online firmware upgrades, when necessary. Krell told us the player will also stream audio and video content from the internet, with Hulu and Netflix to be two of their first streaming partners, with potentially more to follow. UPnP (universal Plug and Play) support will also be available on the 555 for streaming audio and video content from a compatible PC or Network-Attached Storage device. The network port will also come in handy next year, when the company plans to release an iPad app for Krell system control. If you'd rather go wireless, the company will offer an optional 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi card for the player.
The Krell Evolution 555 is expected to begin shipping in December 2010 to Krell's network of authorized dealers.
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