Sony's $10,000 Qualia TV
Sony's Qualia showrooms, like Ferrari dealerships, are not places you go near unless that bonus for landing the big IPO has hit your bank account. It probably comes as little surprise, therefore, to find that the latest in the Qualia range, the 46-inch KDX-46Q005 LCD TV, comes with a price tag of Y1,100,000 (just over $10,000). The list of features would take all day to run down because Sony's gone kid-in-a-sweetshop crazy and crammed in pretty much everything it can find (hell, there's probably a PSP in there if you can find the right slot to open), but the main highlight on the picture front is the use of an LED backlight, which Sony claims improves colour reproduction considerably versus the usual fluorescent kind. It's the first model to feature an interface powered by the PS2's Graphics Synthesizer and Emotion Engine chips, too, and comes with a clamshell, joystick-equipped remote control that looks like you could use it to pilot a plane and solve complex equations while you watch.
