Panasonic PT-AE3000E has arrived!

Saturday, 15 November 2008

It was this time last year when Panasonic released the ground breaking PT-AE2000E 1080p HD projector and I distinctly remember thinking ‘this could not be substantially be improved upon at the £2000 price point’, well I don’t mind being wrong on this one.

Enter the new PT-AE3000E. Outwardly almost identical but the picture, well, how do they do it? Like many, I take the specs with a little scepticism but the results are nothing short of amazing especially considering it’s only £199 more than last years model.

The headline grabbing new feature is ‘LENS MEMORY’ which allows the users of 2.35:1 screens the ability to zoom the image to fill such a screen and then zoom back for a 16:9 with a single press of a button whilst retaining focus, clever.

This will appeal to the many videophiles amongst you but for me the best bit is ‘FRAME CREATION’. Not to get too technical, (there’s plenty of info on this on Panasonic’s own and many other sites) this is where the projector interpolates additional frame/s to produce smoother motion. Don’t think this is just some sort of gimmick just for action movies, no the improvement in retained detail with any motion is awesome and makes the whole experience that more relaxing and enthralling.

Like the PT-AE2000E, the PT-AE3000E has ‘SMOOTH SCREEN TECHNOLOGY’ to give a totally non-pixelated image alongside perfect colour balance in Colour 1 mode, and Hollywood approved colour in Cinema 1 mode but due to the improved light path it has far better blacks, more saturated colour and an overall brighter image, it’s more 3 dimensional and, well, the images just seem to pop off the screen.

Well done Panasonic you’ve done it again. The PT-AE2000E was our best selling projector last season and I expect the PT-AE3000E to do even better.
Oh well, off to the dem room for some more ‘testing’. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it!

It’s now in stock so please call us if you would like to arrange a demo of this wonderful addition to our range.

Hopefully by this time next month we should have the new JVC flagship projector the HD750 at £5500. We saw a pre-production unit a month or so back and, well, it was just jaw dropping. I’ll save the details for another posting when we receive our demo unit. Personally I can’t wait.

Simon

Naim CD555 Upgrade

Wednesday, 8 October 2008

For those of you fortunate enough to own the wonderful Naim CD555, you have every right to believe it to be the best CD player ever made, well, believe it or not but they have found away to significantly improve it.
Over the last few months Naim have had very good reason to be upbeat, what with all their new products such as the Superline, Powerline, HDX etc. but I can’t remember Jason from Naim being quite so excited as he was the other day when he broke the news to us, and that’s saying something!
Apparently Roy George, Naim’s head of design, had been trying a few things out and found that by using, not one but two NAPS555 power supplies for the CD555 made significant improvements.
Having two Burndy connections, one for the digital section and one for the analogue, installation is straight forward enough. Unlike the pre and power amplifiers, the CD555 doesn’t earth through its power supply but through the Hi-line interconnect via to the pre-amp so there are absolutely no earthing anomalies when configured this way. I understand Naim had tried this idea with both the 500 series pre and power but with multiple earths it actually made them sound worse.
Naturally we couldn’t wait to try this out and boy did Jason have every right to be so chipper. The resolution of the system appeared to take a leap forward bearing otherwise unheard textures coupled with greater image stability, focus and poise. Just as welcome was the total lack of any emphasis of the higher registers or harshness even on those awkward discs that you rarely play, we all have them don’t we? Far from muting the top end it actually seems to have increased the system’s bandwidth whilst rendering higher volume levels far easier on the ear, just what we all want, no?
Anyway, we could go on and on but space dictates and therefore we would strongly suggest a demo as soon as you can. This set-up is now on demo here at the Reading store.

Welcome to the Blog!

Wednesday, 8 October 2008

Simon, Steve, Keith and Frank would like to warmly welcome you to the all new Audio-T Reading blog in which we shall be bringing you, amongst many other things, news of new and exciting products for the coming season. This is of course the time of year when many of our suppliers choose to launch new and updated models to tempt you and this year promises to be a bumper year! We also aim to regularly post articles on our favourite ‘toys’ and how to get the best out of them.

Look forward to reading about some of our existing favourites in the form of the fabulous Meridian F80 transportable entertainment system, Naim’s awesome new phonostage, the Superline and their Powerline mains lead and Chord Electronic’s stunning DAC64 replacement, the QBD76 or Quarterback as it’s known.

On top of that we’ll have forthcoming goodies such as new Blu-Ray players and plasmas and LCD TVs from Pioneer and Panasonic plus three new affordable 1080p projectors from JVC and Panasonic.

And if that wasn’t enough, we can’t wait to get our mits on the mouth watering new Blu-Ray player and AV Receiver from Arcam!

Oh wow, we think we are in for some real treats this year and we can’t wait to share the experiences with all of you.