I'll say that this year's Panasonic 3d demo at Cedia Expo finally convinced me that there is a real market for the technology.

In years past, it has been a novelty at best, but this years crop of displays (Sony and Panasonic specifically) were far superior to anything they have shown in the past.

All of the material looked good, but the sports (Olympic intro and others) were simply outstanding. I really don't like the idea of wearing glasses over my glasses, but it's worth it in this case.

It's going to be great and it's going to be appealing to a lot of sports fans so it will sell.

The above linked article is a bunch of trash talk by a competitor, imagine that.

I spent quite a bit of time talking to Ed about his product.
It's not perfect, but it is innovative and will be useful for multiple installations.

It's recompressing the HDMI stream, that's not a problem as ALL HD programming outside of a production booth is already compressed. The question is how well does the compression work, and we won't really know until we can test it. They had multiple sources running in the demo booth and cisco switch was running around 4-5% utilization.

It requires a managed VLAN switch to connect multiple transmitters and receivers together on the network. Each transmitter has it's own VLAN on the switch and the receivers are moved to the appropriate VLAN by a 3rd party control.

It complies to the HDMI license spec, so you are limited to the number of display keys that your source can handle.
Most Blu-ray players support at least 16, some cable boxes only support 1.

I think the most innovative part is how it handles EDID's and resolution. The transmitter always accepts the highest resolution provided by the source. The receiver itself includes a scalar, so if the source resolution is higher than the display, it's automatically down converted for display. The majority of HDMI matrix devices limit the source resolution to that of the lowest connected display, so Ed's approach has a real advantage in multi-display application if not all the panels have identical capabilities. The booth had multiple displays by different manufacturers and different resolutions and it worked.

It was one of the coolest things I saw at Expo and it has a lot of potential, looking forward to trying it out on the bench and seeing how well it performs.

Zigbee is far from non existent, Control4 alone has more than 800,000 Zigbee devices shipped thus far. The new RF4CE standard will see a huge number of remote controls for TV, DVD, Etc moving from IR to Zigbee starting later this year.

Zigbee works, and is in use today. I already have an energy metering system installed and working in my own home with Zigbee devices. It can adjust the HVAC and lighting based on load profiles and occupancy levels.

As US Domestic energy prices skyrocket over the next 3 years, these kinds of energy monitoring and management systems will be very important for keeping your home power bills in check. All of this hope and change is going to be VERY expensive.

Why no mention of the other feature added in the update?
Pandora is now supported on both of these players.
www.pandora.com

For me that's even better than the netfilx addition.

The touchsmart implementation on the desktops uses an infrared sense system instead of a screen overlay like the convertable tablets. The other half of the system is the touch smart software package which adds gestures and touch control in addition to a number of new applications with touch integrated. The software portion will not work on the HP laptops due to the differences in screen sensing today, according to the HP reps I've spoken with. Currently, it also requires Vista 64 to work, so it really limits the software and peripherals available for the system.

I have one of the convertible HP tablets with touchscreen so adding the new software is not much of a stretch for the existing laptop line. I doubt they will use the same screen technology as the desktops since it adds about 1 to 2 MM of depth to the screen. Maybe this is just an adaptation of the software to work with a conventional laptop touchscreen.

The MX-450 is a great, non-PC programmable remote. The macro building process is much much much better than the old style press and hope style of programming.

This isn't a replacement remote like the $20 one 4 all, it's an RF/IR macro based remote that communicates with base stations via RF and devices via IR. It's mainly used for rooms that want to control remote equipment but don't need a high degree of functionality. Like a bedroom or kitchen system where the components are hidden away in a rack in the closet.

Beats the hell out of the old MX-350 and has a great LCD screen.

I think you guys are missing the point of Sonos.
It's a rock solid system that doesn't require rewiring your home/apt. to get music in every room and the controller is so easy to use Grandma will love it. Not sure what you would want changed on the controller, other than adding a touchscreen, it's still the best one in it's class.

Squeezebox Duet is not even in the same world when it comes to ease of use and support. Yes, I've used the Duet and it's not a real competitor to Sonos, maybe for geeks, but not for the average Sonos buyer.

The new units have even better networking (not that the originals were lacking) and better amps, what's not to like?

My favorite way to listen is via a sonos, they have full pandora integration and work as a standalone unit, no PC required.

eInk displays cannot be backlight, thus no backlight option. They can be lit from the front, like a conventional book with a simple LED booklight.

I believe this version uses a later version of the eInk display. It is said to produce better contrast and a "much whiter" screen surface in addition to a quicker refresh.

As an owner of the current ereader, all of these enhancements are welcome.

These are great little units for travel, takes up MUCH less space than a single paperback and it goes a long way on a single charge. The only thing I wish they would add is an LED reading lamp for low light. I don't think they can add a backlight to the eInk display.