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It may have been a residential show, but the new products on display at CEDIA Expo 2010 know few boundaries.
The custom electronic design & installation association (CEDIA) held its annual Expo last month in Atlanta. Productwise, there was a heavy emphasis on Apple iPad apps and everything 3D. When people weren’t talking about iPads or 3D, the words heard most often were “light commercial”—whether from CEDIA integrators describing their forrays into digital signage and commercial installation or product manufacturers emphasizing that the gear they had on display wasn’t limited to residential projects.
Crestron Sonnex. Aside from iPad integration, the chief buzz out of Crestron was Sonnex, a new digital audio distribution platform that can move up to 64 channels of uncompressed 24-bit high-definition audio over a single shielded Cat-5 cable. Think Crestron DigitalMedia, except for audio. The company put 24×8 switching, dignal processing, and amplification (200W at 4 ohms per channel) into one device to minimize cabling and rack requirements. The system can support up to eight expansion units for delivering 24 sources to 72 zones.
LG PX950. LG Electronics’ newest series of plasma displays are the first to be THX 3D certified. The company says the PX950 had to pass 400 laboratory evaluating left- and right-eye images for color accuracy, cross-talk, viewing angles, and video processing. The displays work with active-shutter glasses and have an emitter built in.
Lutron RadioRA 2. The lighting control manufacturer is integrating HVAC management into its RadioRA 2 system. The three-part solution includes the seeTemp flush-mount thermostat and controller, a wireless temperature sensor, and a controller thats mounted on the actual HVAC unit. The seeTemp thermostat resembles a Lutron light dimmer and has an Eco button that can cut back light and HVAC output, lower shades, and turn off appliances to save energy.
Projectiondesign SuperWide 235. The Avielo Optix SuperWide 235 is reportedly the first-ever native 2.35:1 projector, using a DLP chip co-developed by Projectiondesign and Texas Instruments to output 2538×1080 resolution without an anamorphic lens. Projectiondesign also came out with a new Avielo Optix 3D projector, which uses specially designed high-resolution lenses and supports Blu-ray 3D and HDMI 1.4.
Sharp Aquos Quattron 3D. Sharp showed off its first LED-lit 3D LCD displays, the Aquos Quattron 3D LE925 series. They come in sizes of 52 and 60 inches with RS-232, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi connectivity (Wi-Fi is accomplished using a bundled USB adapter). Sharp says they come with IP control functionality that’s compatible with Control4 systems. For better 3D performance, the displays use Sharp’s quad pixel system for added brightness and frame-rate enhancement to reduce motion blur.
ZeeVee ZvPro 280. ZeeVee demonstrated its new flagship MPEG-2 encoder and QAM modulator, which the company upgraded to better distribute 1080p and 1080i video over coaxial cable. Designed for distributing HDTV in hospitality, digital signage, and other applications, the ZvPro 280 is controllable via RS-232 and can stream multiple languages.
