Pristine transfers and favorite demo material aside, if you're an obsessive-compulsive videophile like us, one of the first discs you reach for after unboxing that new TV is a calibration disc. You know, the ones with the exciting test patterns and narration that empty a room really fast. Make space in your arsenal for one more of those riveting discs, because Marvell is bringing out its Qdeo Blu-ray disc to help you evaluate your setup, and with a focus on noise reduction, format conversion and image enhancement, this disc could be a good fit for modern systems that have the ability to stack tweak upon tweak at the player, receiver and TV. We'll admit that we're always a little leery of electronics manufacturers that issue their own test discs, but as long as no foul play is uncovered, it certainly can't hurt to have another choice on the market; some test patterns just work better for some people.

Yes folks, we're back to the drawing board. Again. With a litany of wireless technologies floundering about and struggling to find real traction in the market, a cadre of market powerhouses have joined up to take wireless streaming to the next level -- or so they say, anyway. The newly formed WiGig Alliance aims to use unlicensed 60GHz waves in order to stream just about anything you can think of: HD video, images, phone contacts, instant messages, audio, etc. This "unified" approach differs from most other alternatives, which generally pick one niche (1080p video, for instance) and stick to it. If the more than 15 technology firms have their collective druthers, the WiGig specification will find its way into everything from set-top-boxes to telephones to home stereos, ready and willing to stream to other WiGig-enabled devices at a moment's notice.

The group consists of household names such as Microsoft, LG, Dell, Samsung, Marvell, Nokia, NEC, Intel and Broadcom (just to name a few), and when we spoke to executives about the announcement, they told us that plans were to have the specification available to member organizations in Q4 of this year. The sad part is that this likely means we won't see shipping products with the WiGig logo for another year after that -- if we're lucky. We can't argue that some stability would be nice in this volatile sector; after all, we've been waiting for promising products like Belkin's FlyWire to ship for well over a year. The execs we spoke with couldn't speak on behalf of the partner firms in terms of what WiGig products were looming on the horizon, but as we alluded to earlier, the playing field is wide open. Honestly, we'd love for this to take off and finally give high-bandwidth wireless applications the support it needs to flourish, but as we've seen over the past few years, the road ahead ain't an easy one to walk. The full release is after the break.

Anyone even remotely familiar with Meridian will understand that it caters to the affluent sect. Anyone even considering disputing that fact need look no further than the recently unveiled 810 Reference Video System. This monstrous projector boasts ten full megapixels of resolution, a native 4,096 x 2,400 resolution, 3-chip D-ILA module, PKI Xenon light, 10,000:1 contrast ratio, 4,000 lumens and a video processing box created by Marvell. Slated to ship in Q3, the PJ comes packaged with a long, short or medium-throw lens as well as a "motorized 2.35:1 anamorphic lens assembly for fixed height ultra-wide screen installations." Each unit also comes bundled with the 810 Reference Video Scaler "which connects to the projector with four parallel DVI-D cables, each carrying one quadrant of the image." Early reports suggest that even with all the fancy hardware, the $185,000 asking price may still be a bit high, so make sure you give this one a serious look before committing.

[Via BigPictureBigSound]