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Vizio XVT CinemaWide TV goes on sale, 21:9 movie purists celebrate the end of black bars
It's been a long, long wait for Vizio's ultrawidescreen LCD TV to show its face: the company was promising such sets starting around this time last year that ultimately missed the October and subsequent March targets. Vizio is one to eventually make good on a promise, though, and has just started shipping the first XVT series CinemaWide set. The lone 58-inch model's focus remains on that 2560 x 1080p screen, whose stretchy 21:9 aspect ratio fits what you often see at the movie theater without having to crop or adjust like you would with a typical 16:9 set. Whether or not you have a chronic aversion to black bars, the CinemaWide is still a respectable set in its own right, with edge-based LED backlighting, a 120Hz refresh rate, a Bluetooth remote and the common host of Vizio internet apps. The TV maker must be doing a form of penance for taking its time on the 21:9 display: the $2,800 regular price is a lot lower than the originally quoted $3,500, and you can pick up the CinemaWide TV for $2,500 if you act quickly.
NHK prototypes one-fourth of a 116-inch, 8K plasma set (video)
NHK has been working on 33 megapixel, 8K Super Hi-Vision displays for quite some time now. As the story goes, in 2005 the group's Science and Technology Labs estimated a necessary 0.3mm dot pitch for plasma screens in the 100-inch category to achieve the necessary 7,680 x 4,320 pixels for display. At the time, the best plasma could muster was 0.9mm, but now the researchers have created a prototype 58-inch screen with 0.33mm pixel pitch. Ergo, four such prototypes stacked together should create a 116-inch window to the world that just about displays 8K video. It's still a ways off from market, but be honest, are you really already griping about the visible pixels on your 1080p set? Totally inadequate web video version after the break.
