Meridian has noticed something that many companies haven't- the current iPod is a video playback device. Meridian's MV-D1 dock not only allows your AV system to control the iPod and hear the music, it features component and HDMI outputs with built-in scaling up to 1080p!

Analog and digital audio outputs are included and the iPod's menu can be controlled via remote and seen on your on-screen display. There is only so much that can be done with the video quality of feeds from the iTunes store, which are often just 320x240. But if you are going to watch those shows on a screen larger than the iPod's, this lets your iPod videos travel in as much style as possible!

Firm pricing wasn't offered, but the unit is expected to come in around $400. My own iPod might have just made its way into my home theater system!

> Fox's catalog slate will be just as impressive. In fact there are too many to name. Here are just some of the highlights. February will see Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, with David Cronenberg's The Fly hitting stores in April. May will see Master and COmmander: The Far Side of the World, Edward Scissorhands, Predator and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. June will see Independence Day and Cast Away

MGM's catalog will host a variety of classics including Silence of the Lambs, Dances with Wolves, Platoon, A Fistful of Dollars and the The Graduate (yea!!). Other releases include hits like The Usual Suspects, Hoosiers, and Bull Durham.

2007 is shaping up to be an insane year in next-gen HD on a disc. There's been so many significant announcements to follow, I didn't even have time to post on Disney's impressive Blu-ray lineup for the first half of 2007. There are some very impressive catalog titles coming in, and here they are.

Starting in March and rolling out in waves through June the US will see Chicken Little, Con Air, Crimson Tide, Finding Neverland, GI Jane, King Arthur: The Director's Cut (take that, Kingdom of Heaven!), Kevin Costner's masterpiece western Open Range, The Recruit, Remember the Titans and The

Now that's a bookshelf speaker! The ICS designation indicates that this speaker is designed with in-cabinet use in mind, Snell's ICS 1030 LCR speaker is a work of art. Literally. Snell works with a talented artist and will paint any scene the customer wishes on the grill to make the speaker disappear into its environment. The speaker pictured here is obviously painted like a set of books and the effect is nothing short of striking.

THe ICS 1030 retails for $960/ea., and there's a price to pay for the painted version as there is with all art. The custom paint job doubles the cost, with the premium coming in at $1K per speaker. Nevertheless, if you want objet d'art instead of a speaker box, this is your ticket.

Microsoft's Kevin Collins staged a couple of impressive demonstrations of interactivity features upcoming from HD DVD.

All current HD DVD players allow users to save and easily recall their favorite scenes on their HD DVD discs with a button push on the remote. Going beyond, Kevin showed in real time that he could save his favorite scenes on a player, and upload them to a server that then gave him the option of sending his "My Scenes" to friends, or allowed him to access the scenes from the same title on a different player. Kevin used a second-gen HD-A2 to save the scene, but then accessed it from a first-gen HD-Xa1 to deomnstrate that Toshiba's first-gen players will be able to take advantage of new features on the format.

The idea is that participating studios will supply a web site at which users can register and store and share the lists of scenes. Viewing the scenes of a different title requires having that disc in the player at the time, but the point is that it's easy to store and share your favorite scenes with your buddies.

In addition, a Donwload Center feature wil allow for additional features, trailers etc. to be downloaded to a title and accessed from its menu. It will nalso allow for business development opportunities in which a retailer or manufacturer would provide keys to unlock exlcusive clips, trailers or features.

HD DVD promised next-gen interactivity, and is continues to make good on the claim in impressive fashion.

Pictured above is a screen shot from a Bandai animated title that not only allows storyboards to run simultaneously with movie, but allows searches for scenes with the storyboarding feature.

Tough talk isn't confined to the Blu-ray camp when it comes to sales forecasting and some impressive data on current titles.

Unit sales on players are anticipated to be as high as 1.8 million units in the US, which would be good news. The HD DVD 's group research shows that owners of HD DVD players purchased an average of 28 titles during 2006. If the player sales go anywhere near the group's projections, the disc repliocators better start pulling all-nighters!

Sony showed this giant 82” LCD prototype, which featured LED backlighting and XVycc color space, but you can actually buy a 70” model (for $33,000) with similar technology. A special SXRD rear-projection prototype was powered by a laser rather than a light bulb and was only 10” deep. While there were many claimed advantages of using a laser as a light source, I found something just a bit wrong-looking about the picture on the SXRD prototype. The current SXRDs looked great as did the LCD sets.

Toshiba is clearly promoting its Regza LCD sets above other technologies as there were only two DLP sets shown. The new Regza line has some impressive innovations which could push Toshiba to the LCD forefront. Even the 720p sets have a dynamic backlight to improve contrast ratio by a factor of 5 and advanced 14-bit video processing (instead of 8). All 1080p models have a wider color space but the Cinema Series sets (available up to 57”) also have XVycc technology for enhanced color space conforming to the new IEC standard plus a 120 hz refresh rate. Most models are coming by April but the Cinema Series will be delayed until June/July.

Samsung had an impressive showing of newly developed LCD technology beside the old. Their LED backlit model boasted a 100,000:1 contrast ratio and a new, clearer panel for enhanced contrast and color clarity. One comparison showed how the LED backlit set, even working at 60 hz, was able to show motion as clear as a conventional set running at 120 hz. While Sharp seems to have the advantage in LCD right now, that may all change in the third quarter of this year when these new Samsung models arrive.

Sharp was showing a side-by-side comparison of last year’s 1080p LCD sets vs the new models. One comparison showed the advantage of 120 hz refresh rate vs standard 60 hz with 120 having a very obvious advantage in maintaining focus during movement. The second comparison showed the far darker blacks of the new sets, which have 3000:1 contrast ratio enhanced to 15,000:1 by the dynamic backlight. Many sizes are offered (most available now) to directly compete with plasma including a 65” model (coming early summer). The premium D92 series also features a 5-wavelength backlight for improved color. The step-down D82 series has slightly less contrast and a 4-wavelength backlight. A mega-contrast (and mega-expensive) 37” model was also shown boasting a million to one contrast ratio.

Panasonic has an entirely new lineup of plasmas scheduled for mid-year introduction. The top 750 series (with new models in 42-, 50, and 58-inch sizes) will include ISF adjustment and tweaks for improved picture quality. No prices were suggested. In a darkened area, Panasonic was demoing a 58-inch design against a 32-inch pro CRT monitor. The plasma arguably won by a nose in image quality and by a mile in impact.

We don't normally cover home video production and editing, but with a new generation of affordable HD camcorders comes new editing tools. Sony's VAIO RM Hi-def Video Editing System (VGC-RM1) has a Blu-ray Disc read/write HD drive, 1 TB of hard disc storage, and Adobe Premier Pro editing software.

Sony's VGX-XL3 VAIO XL3 Digital Living System is essentially a computer with a horizontal form factor, a Blu-ray read-write HD optical drive, a CableCARD enabled HDTV TV tuner, HDMI connectivity, and Windows' Vista operating system. Since Vista has not been released yet, this hasn't either.

I had hoped to see a new 1080p projector from Yamaha. Since that company's 720p DPX-1300 is probably my favorite DLP projector of that flavor, I eagerly anticipate a 1080p design from them. But it was not to be at this CES. CEDIA 2007? A Yamaha rep suggested that might be the case, but he wasn't all that emphatic.

Incidentally, Samsung's much-rumored 1080p design also failed to make an appearance.

Samsung's new Super Clear technology, one of several new technologies developed by Samsung for better LCD performance, will appear soon in the company's new 65 Series flat panel LCDs. It definitely produced a more vibrant image (which can't really be seen in a photograph, so I'm showing you a brief tech explanation card that appeared in the demo instead). Is it more natural? When we get our hands on one, we'll let you know.

Apart from the slim profile of the new Samsung RPTVs, one feature caught my eye: the jacks are side mounted for easy access.

Samsung now has several RPTVs that use LEDs for illumination instead of a projection lamp. This is the largest of the new models, the HL-6187S at 61". It's a full 1920x1080 (as are most all of the sets we are discussing here), with a slim depth of 14.4" and a claimed contrast ratio of 10,000:1. Contrast ratio is now officially the video equivalent of the old audio wattage race.

Samsung, alone among the major exhibitors, was warning people not to take photos in their booth. I guess they don't like publicity. I snapped this just before I was warned. Fortunately, I had already taken several other shots before I was nabbed. Later in the day we got permission before shooting our first video installment.

Sony was showing a gaggle of 11" (diagonal) OLED displays, along with a 27" model. OLEDs, or Organic Light Emitting Diodes, were once thought to be the next big thing in flat panels. They are not only thin, but have great contrast. The light comes from the diodes themselves, and may be modulated or even shut off, similar to the way in which the venerable CRT provides its stunning contrast. The 27" model here is a full 1920x1080 resolution, while the 11" models are 1024x600.

No display I saw on the first day of the show impressed me more than these designs. OLEDs are known to have some technical problems, including panel life and yield in large sizes. But Sony tamed the supposedly intractable LCoS yield problem in their SXRD sets, so we wouldn't count OLED out, particularly when it can produce results like this. And if the crowds drawn to these displays were any indication, OLEDs could be a major hit.

Those small OLED displays that impressed everyone who saw them in the Sony booth (see the above), shown here in a side view, weren't much thicker than a piece of cardboard!