Big Picture Big Sound

HP, once known as as a provider of midrange Unix computer systems for business, is taking larger strides into the living room with a bevy of consumer electronics products which marry personal computers with home theater systems.

At Home Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, HP had on display their Z558 Media Center computer, a brand new LED-illuminated DLP-based 1080p HDTV and an upcoming integrated LCD HDTV/Media Server. Although HP is a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, there was no sign or announcements yet of hardware to support that format.

We covered the Z558 Digital Enetertainment Center back at its introduction at Digital Life 2005. It's an impressive piece, with plenty of horsepower, integrated ATSC tuner with PVR and DVD+/-RW drive with integrated LightScribe labeling technology. Plus it looks like a home theater component, so it will fit right into your fancy equipment rack.


More recently introduced was the first production DLP-based RPTV which uses LEDs for illumination, rather than incandescent bulbs, the ID5286n ($2799, available this Summer). Samsung announced an LED DLP at CES this year, but has yet to begin manufacturing the unit. The main advantages of LED illumination include longer lamp life (up to 20,000 hours with no reduction in brightness), more accurate color rendition, and - because separate LEDs are used for red, green and blue - no need for a color wheel. The color wheel is needed on traditional single-chip projectors to "fool" the eye into seeing colors by rapidly spinning a multi-segment color filter in front of the projected image, one pixel at a time. This introduces a distortion pattern known as the "rainbow" effect which is objectionable to some, and invisible to others. By eliminating the color wheel, HP (and other manufacturers such as Samsung) are eliminating one of the major objections against DLP projection.


The ID5286N features a 52-inch screen (diagonal measurement), a rated contrast ratio of up to 5,000:1 and a 1920X1080 (1080p) screen resolution courtesy of HP's "Wobulation" technology. It offers HDMI, component, S-video, and VGA video inputs. It also includes cableCARD support, a built-in OTA ATSC tuner and an integrated multi-format card reader for direct display of photos on the display.


In the flat panel department, HP showed off their new MediaSmart LCD flat panel HDTV the SLC3760n (coming in August for under $3,000). This 37-inch flat panel features 1366X768 resolution, up to 450 cd/m2 brightness and up to 6,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. But more interesting is its integrated wireless (or wired) media server capability.

With this TV, you can keep all your content (videos, music, photos) on your computer, and display them on the TV without the need for a dedicated home theater PC. It supports all of the popular video formats, such as WMV, WMV-HD, MPEG1, MPEG2, AVI and DivX (MPEG-4), as well as photos in JPEG, BMP, GIF or PNG format, and music in MP2, MP3, WMA, and WMA-Pro format. Its DRM (Digital Rights Management) support allows you to play back protected content stored on your PC directly on your TV.

DRM issues (specifically copy management) were one of the sticking points HP had with the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association) specifications of the BD format. The BDA has left it up to the studios to restrict or allow managed copy and distribution of BD content across a home network, which HP (and some others) views as "consumer-unfriendly." Although HP is a member of the BDA, they have not committed any specific hardware deliverables in support of either format (BD or HD-DVD). It will be interesting to see which camp HP ultimately supports, and how long it takes them to commit one way or the other.

Note: updated ID5286n availability date, still no sign in stores -Ed