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SE2 Labs: Everything but the kitchen sink

If you ever wished to have all of your home theater equipment in one obtrusive, industrial monolith, your prayers have been answered. The new Utah based company SE2 Labs introduced the ITC One (not to be confused with R5-D4) at CEDIA Expo in Denver, CO last week. This 18″ W x 21″ H x 20″ D all-in-one modular system includes your choice of Microsoft X-Box 360, X-Box 360 HD DVD Player, Nintendo Wii, DirecTV, High-Def Tivo, Dish Network DVR, national cable providers DVR (including Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Cable and many more), AMX Netlinx Control System, High-End Digital Surround Processor, Bryston Pre-Amp Processor with full digital outputs, IcePower High-End D-Class Amplifiers, High-End Video Processor, Front Touchpanel Screen, Apple Video iPod with Dock, proprietary Remote Control, Power Conditioning, Transparent Cabling and Cable Harness. If that isn’t enough to make you wonder, “What the hell?” SE2 Labs has partnered with Vidikron to provide a video display, and Triad to provide the speakers.

SE2 Labs has included an integrated cooling system to keep all the compact components from bursting into a flaming ball of fire and seriously maiming you (I’m sure it’s an insurance requirement). A mechanical isolation system prevents vibrations and suppresses the noise so you can enjoy your films and near the dialog too - a killer combination. Considering it includes the notoriously loud Xbox 360, this is an important feature.

My favorite feature of the ITC One is the pre-programmed remote. The back lit clicker looks like a stylish battle cruiser right out of Star Trek. It operates on RF frequencies so you don’t have to be in the line-of-sight, unlike the typical IR type remote. It features customized macros for one touch access to the sources inside the system. It can even control your lighting system! If that isn’t good enough, there is an LCD touch screen on the front of the case to manage all functions.

To be completely fair, this is a breakthrough product with eleven registered patents. If I didn’t know any better I would think SE2 developed the TARDIS (I know what you’re thinking, TARDISes are not made, they’re grown - whatever, grow up).

You’ve been foaming at the mouth for four paragraphs for this, so I’ll get right to it. The ITC One is yours from $19,900 from an authorized custom installer (must be the world’s laziest installer to use a pre-configured theater). Run! Don’t Walk to your nearest SE2 dealer to get yours today!

Marantz displays Blu-ray player

For some reason, CEDIA was surprisingly lacking in big HD DVD/Blu-ray news. One of the Blu-ray announcements was that Marantz, a highly respected consumer electronics company, was supporting Blu-ray with an early 2008 Blu-ray player.

The Marantz BD8002 is scheduled to retail for $2,099 in the first quarter of next year, and closely resembles the previously announced Denon player. This is no surprise because Denon and Marantz are both owned by parent company D&M Holdings (D&M standing for Denon & Marantz, of course). Both players sport the same form factor, same Silicon Optix Realta chipset, same v1.1 spec, same MSRP and same price point.



While it’s always nice to see another company supporting high-definition optical media, I’m more interested in finding more options in multiple categories (including price) than finding the same player with different names on the front to fulfill different distribution channels.

I have a pile of literature from CEDIA on my desk to go through, and I’ll find the more interesting new products and achievements to deliver.

The question of value

Last night I took my wife out to a nice steak house and wine bar for dinner, as I do sometimes. It was a pleasant experience in the casual, but elegant, restaurant dining on a filet mignon with a glass of Pinot Noir from Sonoma, CA. Of course, if it wasn’t nice I would have been disappointed and I would have really missed that $160. But where am I going with this?

You know in the film 300 when Leonidas says to his men, “Tonight we dine in hell!” I always ask the question from the perspective of one of his soldiers: “We’re going to Sizzler?”

It is this gulf between a quality steak at $32 and a mediocre steak at $19 that I began to muse over. There must be many people who think a $19 steak from Sizzler is fantastic, or at the very least it’s adequate. There are others, like myself, who would never consider the over-cooked piece of left-over meat as worth $19. In this regard I relate to the food critic, Anton Ego, from the Pixar film Ratatouille when he exclaims, “I don’t like food, I love it. If I don’t love it, I don’t swallow.” In the same way, most people find their standard-definition DVD collection as more than adequate, thus they do not see the need to spend a good deal of money to upgrade (for surely everyone has DVD equipment they’re replacing) to Blu-ray and/or HD DVD.

It’s probably a good bet that the majority of the population have not had the pleasure of dining in an up-scale steak house. When you haven’t tried the best, you really have no benchmark to compare mediocre to. In fact, mediocre is all you know, but to you it is not mediocre, it is good. When something is good, why would you want to replace it? What benefit is there to pay thrice the price for the “same” steak you could get at Sizzler? Ah, but it is not the same! And, no, it doesn’t taste better just because you pay more.

We’re still in an era of standard-definition. Only about 55-million households in the U.S. have an HDTV, but over 130-million have DVD players. The sum of all HD DVD and Blu-ray players is still a fraction of the total HDTV install base, let alone the DVD market. This is the reason why Blu-ray and HD DVD will always remain a niche product.

Over two thirds of HDTV owners believe DVD is “high-definition.” This is probably because DVD did a bang-up job promoting the format’s higher-resolution than VHS a decade ago. Most HDTV owners also think anything they watch on their HD set is high-def. How they can think the picture they have at home is the same as the one they saw in the store is mind-boggling, but it’s still a problem the backers of both next-gen formats have to face. Before the market is going to buy into Blu-ray, they’re going to have to buy into high-def. Before they’re going to buy HD DVD, they’re going to have to know the benefits of high-def.

The promoters of both formats do know this, and that’s why you see so many ads for them on Discovery HD-Theater. It’s also why Panasonic and Disney embarked on their Magical Blu-ray Tour, and Panasonic is also setting off on their own bus tour promoting high-def and educating the public on high-def, plasma and Blu-ray Disc. Toshiba is also set to start airing HD DVD ads on Sunday Night Football on NBC (an NBC Universal company).

While I posit that both formats will remain niche, I also contend that the market will dictate a winner and will eventually support one format nearly exclusively, and that this will be a good thing. High-def is a growing market, and nearly every TV sold today is a high-def set. DirecTV and Dish Network are adding hundreds of high-def channels to their network. Adoption will grow and as the consumer is educated, they will be interested in high-def movies. Of course with the two formats, ennui will reign in some of these hopeful shoppers. However, some people will buy a player and be happy getting a limited selection in high-def while enjoying the rest on DVD. If the market favors one format, it will inevitably favor one format in the long run. There is historic precedent for this as the Betamax war lasted over a decade but did eventually end with one format as the standard. I feel the sooner this happens the better. One format will help the high-def market grow much faster as all the companies can focus all their attention on educating the market on high-def instead of trying to explain why they should chose whichever format they support.

If there isn’t a winner soon, video-on-demand just might win. I know a few people already who do not rent movies and aren’t interested in buying either next-gen format opting to use the free video-on-demand they get from Time Warner Cable. Their options are limited, of course, but they figure they only watch a few things a week and they can wait for new releases to hit the free channels. It’s possible Time Warner or Comcast could make their service unlimited and load up every title they can get the rights to and it would be like Netflix’s “Watch Now” feature, only in high-def. This is the most likely VOD type service as the biggest criticism of streaming content is the bandwidth issue. Of course if the cable providers can do it already, it’s not just a pipe dream.

I’m holding out hope that one of the next-gen optical formats will finally win this ridiculous war because a lot of people like collecting movies, and you don’t get the same satisfaction with a hard drive. Of course it’s hard to say if any format could match the pure joy of a nice Syrah.

Sony launches new Blu-ray promotional website

It’s not quite as impressive as HD DVD’s own thelookandsoundofperfect.com, but Sony’s new happyhdtv.com is a light-hearted collection of Blu-ray facts.

The easily navigated Flash site spoofs pet products, putting your new HDTV in the position of, say, a puppy. Would you give your cute little puppy processed cornmeal, or the rice and lamb food she deserves? You know my puppy will get the good stuff - it’s good for the animal, and makes me feel good too. That’s the general idea behind happyhdtv.com. “Please get high-def on your HDTV, not that sorry standard-def stuff from Safeway.”


As cute as it is, the site doesn’t have a lot of content on it yet. A couple of the pages are nearly identical, and a lot of the information is duplicated a few times. Yes, I get that Blu-ray has a lot of industry support, but please tell me what high-def is and why it’s better than the store-brand. Perhaps they’ll add a lot more to it later.

So you may be thinking this was the most pathetic post ever. You’re wrong. I’m right. That about sums it up.

LG BH200 Blu-ray HD DVD hybrid player generation 2

LG Electronics has announced their 2nd generation “Super Blu” standalone player, dubbed the BH200. LG was the very first company to debut a hybrid HD DVD/Blu-ray player, the BH100, which was announced at CES in January, earlier this year. LG’s original hybrid model, the BH100, was not capable of playing the interactive features of HD DVD (HDi). Due to this handicap, the BH100 did not display an HD DVD logo on the unit.

The new LG BH200 exceeds where its’ predecessor, the BH100 failed. The new player can play back both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc high definition movies along with supporting both BD-J and HDi features. This player is fully HD DVD compliant and will proudly bare the HD DVD logo.

The BH200 will be available in mid October at a suggested retail price of $999. The new LG player will be directly competing with Samsung’s Duo HD BD-UP5000 player, which also supports both Blu-ray and HD DVD. The Samsung BD-UP5000 is scheduled to debut with a suggested retail price of $1,049, slightly more than the BH200 MSRP.

Could there be a hybrid player price war brewin’? Maybe a slight one. And while I certainly welcome any news of additional high def players that support both HD DVD and Blu-ray, I doubt that we will see any major price reductions on these types of players until more manufacturers get into the hybrid game (hello China). For more info on the BH200, check out ElectronicHouse.

Star Trek The Original Series coming to HD DVD

Paramount home entertainment will be releasing Star Trek: The Original Series, Season 1 in high definition exclusively on HD DVD this November 20th. This latest offering will include remastered high definition video, newly added CGI special effects, newly added musical scores and a host of interactive special features created specifically for the HD DVD format via HDi.

This new original series release will be the ultimate Star Trek product for any hardcore trekkie. But with a suggested retail price of $198.99, will it be worth the dough? Now’s your chance to find out. To help build anticipation and demand for this HD DVD release, Paramount has recently released a promotional video that highlights and demonstrates the plethora of interactive features and bonus content that will be available. Check out the video below to catch a glimpse.

The video preview shows that this HD DVD release is certainly packed with special features. An interactive shuttle game allows the viewer to navigate around the exterior of the starship Enterprise. “Starfleet Access” mode provides additional information on lifeforms, science, technology, episode trivia, video commentaries and more. This certainly looks like the most comprehensive Star Trek home video release I have ever seen, with even more special features than I have mentioned in this article. If you are a Star Trek original series fan, you will probably love this HD DVD release.

Daewoo DBP-1000 Blu-ray player - Profile 2.0 compliant

This year’s IFA consumer electronics convention in Europe has led to a slew of new Blu-ray hardware announcements from various manufacturers, including Daewoo. Surprisingly though, Daewoo is the very first manufacturer to announce a Blu-ray Disc player that is fully compliant with the BD-ROM profile 2.0 specifications.

BD-ROM profile version 2.0 is the next step of mandatory specifications for Blu-ray players that will come into effect after version 1.1. Blu-ray players that are currently on the market are only certified as BD-ROM profile 1.0 players, which means that the current generation of players may not be able to playback advanced BD-Java interactive features that will be released on future Blu-ray Discs. All Blu-ray players released after October 31st of this year are required to at least be compatible with version 1.1 of the specifications, which will allow for more advanced BD-Java compatibility. There is currently no mandatory date for version 2.0 specifications, which most notably requires the inclusion of an ethernet port on every player to ensure internet connectivity and online interactivity.

The newly announced Daewoo DBP-1000 Blu-ray player is fully 2.0 compliant and is ahead of the competition in terms of features and specifications adherence. Unfortunately, there has been no announced street date or suggested retail price as of yet, but everyone is looking forward to more details on this intriguing new player. In the meantime, here are a few pictures of the new DBP-1000 player.

The blue mirror finish face of the device makes for an extremely attractive looking Blu-ray player. The player is also one of the slimmest, most compact Blu-ray standalone players seen yet. Other specifications include 1080p output via an HDMI port, BD-R/BD-RE Disc playback, DivX support and a USB port on the face. For more coverage on this beauty, check out RegHardware.