Audio News for June 27, 2008

Anamorphic Lenses for Digital Home Cinema – Videophile perfectionists are using special anamorphic lenses on their 16:9 video projectors to achieve Cinemascope wide images without letterboxing black bars and with less image distortion than the electronic expansion built into projectors or players. A 16:9 ratio front screen can be totally filled with a hi-def image rather than displayed with black bars above and below. There are also lenses designed to expand any 4:3 images to fill 16:9 screens.  One example are the lenses from Schneider Optics, ranging from about $2000 to $4000.

Blu-ray Outstripping Early DVD Market in Europe – Recent research from Futuresource compares Blu-ray uptake with uptake of DVD during its early years.  Focusing on like-for-like coverage of Western Europe, indications are that Blu-ray player sales are way ahead of DVD in the same time period. More than ten million players are expected to be in use by the end of 2008.  Over the same time period with DVD only 1.5 million players were installed.  Futuresource sees Blu-ray becoming the disc-based product of choice.

The Source for the Processing and Data Display in Your Home Entertainment System – Inside your AV receiver or preamp, your set-top box, your car audio system, and even your digital mobile player is a small microprocessor with DSP functionality which handles complex numeric tasks such as decoding various audio codecs, encoding video, search and retrieval of audio and video files and metadata, and running the operating system. One example is the Blackfin 16/32-bit microprocessor from Analog Devices. Software maker Encirq Corporation has announced DeviceSQL, which is an embedded database software development kit (SDK) for developing various applications on the Blackfin microprocessor. DeviceSQL is not shipping in millions of consumer electronics devices in a wide variety of applications. Its distinctive features include a small memory footprint and search engine features. The new breed of microprocessor is used in devices where a convergence of capabilities is critical – including multi format audio, video, voice and image processing, multimode baseband and packet processing, and security and control processing. Convergent applications where such microprocessors are being used today include digital home entertainment, digital radio, networked and streaming media, automotive electronics, and mobile TV.

Dead Can Dance Nine-SACD Boxed Set – The unique pop group Dead Can Dance has remastered its entire back catalog of albums to SACD format on nine discs in a $250 boxed set with a black velvet inner lining – to be available starting June 30.  The high-quality mixes will also be hybrid for playing on standard CD players.  Only 1500 sets will be pressed.