Vizio's on quite the rampage today as CES gets going, and it's kicking things off with a new line of plasmas. The new VP series includes the 32-inch VP322 ($689), 42-inch VP422 ($999) / VP423 ($999), 50-inch VP503 ($1,399) / VP504F ($1,699) and the flagship 60-inch VP605F ($2,899). The latter two are Vizio's pride and joy of this bunch, as they both sport Silicon Optix HQV processing, 1080p resolution, an integrated ATSC / Clear-QAM tuner, 30,000:1 contrast ratio and four HDMI 1.3 inputs. The firm is also throwing out a pair of new "all-in-one" solutions (the VP500 / VP501) which include 50-inch sets along with 5.1 surround sound systems. For more details on the whole lot, be sure and give the read link some attention.

Supposedly Marantz's new Blu-ray player was at CEDIA, but if it was, we missed it. We won't let that happen again next week and we guarantee we'll get our hands-on the new BD8002 at CES next Wednesday. This players seems it may be one of best players ever considering it includes everything we can think of -- as it should with a MSRP of $2,099.99. At the top of the list is the players ability to decode just about every new audio codec out there including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA, and output it via 7.1 analog outs or uncompressed via HDMI. The icing on the cake is the inclusion of the 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta video processor, which should help make it the best Profile 1.1 player yet when it's released the second quarter of 2008.

Denon has announced its first real Blu-ray player, with an appropriate assortment of never-before-seen features and price tag to match. The DVD-3800BDCI will launch this fall as the first high definition player to include Silicon Optix's 10-bit Realta HQV video processor, recently seen in Syntax-Brillian's $10k LCD and the big brother to the Toshiba HD-XA2's Reon. The first Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player we've seen, it supports separate picture-in-picture audio and video streams. Unfortunately, $1,999 isn't enough to provide an Ethernet port, so any online content will need to be downloaded on a PC and sneakernetted to the player via SD card. Finally, internal decoding for all Blu-ray surround sound formats is included, and it's the first player with an HDMI 1.3a output, providing enough bandwidth to pass sound natively to a receiver for decoding. Announced but unfortunately unpriced for $1,199 is the DVD-2500BTCI Blu-ray Transport, dropping the advanced audio and video processing for those with their own receivers and scalers. Coming from a company that sells a $3,800 DVD player, the price isn't too surprising, but we hope there are cheaper (& network-enabled) new Blu-ray options forthcoming.

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