Apart from the foretold battle of impressions around the 4K concave screens and their dimensions in inches (well yes, it happened again), there were quite interesting things to see in the area of audio and video technology in Berlin, this year. IFA is the largest exhibition for mainstream home entertainment devices in Europe at this time, and the mainstream will always be important! Putting first things first though, and apart from developments in the field of computers, smartphones and tablets, TV technology was again at the center of the stage. 4K resolution sets are now a standard for the high end TV market, with all the major players presenting large concave screens that seemed rather impressive, at least at the show grounds. An interesting trend, here, was the shift to the more "cinematic" 21:9 aspect ratio.

In the audio systems field, one could understand that, from the manufacturers point of view at least, the iPod generation has come of age and their sound quality requirements increased. This observation explains the impressive variety of serious headphone designs and corresponding headphone amplifiers. It is obvious that for some listeners, the standard in-ear set included with their media players are no longer sufficient, especially for some serious listening. Return of the major manufacturers in the field of two-channel Hi-Fi continued this year. After Yamaha, which has most consistently offer new products for some years now, Sony also seems to reinvent themselves as an audio company, announcing the release of two large floorstanding loudspeakers for the European market and, also, Panasonic tried hard to resurrect their Technics brand name presenting a Reference system for several tens of thousands of euros while a more reasonably priced system was also introduced. Take a look at the photos beginning here…

Dimitris Stamatakos

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