Gadgets Base

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 18th 2008 at 10:10AM
While Lenovo saw fit to stuff 1,920 x 1,200 pixels into a 22-inch panel, NEC is giving users a little more real estate to work with in its 26-inch EA261WM. The WUXGA LCD monitor is the first member of the newly launched MultiSync Enterprise Advanced (EA) Series and includes a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 400 cd/m2 brightness, 5-millisecond response time, 92% color gamut, 4-port USB hub, 4-way adjustable stand and on-screen display controls in the bezel. Furthermore, you’ll find down-firing speakers with a headphone jack, a DVI-D input, cable management cover and an ECO mode for giving Mother Earth (and your power bill) a break. It’ll be available this August with a three-year warranty for $679.99.

Gallery: NEC kicks out 26-inch EA261WM lcd monitor with WUXGA resolution

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by Darren Murph, posted Jun 18th 2008 at 9:00AM
InfoComm is in full swing down in Vegas, and Texas Instruments isn’t wasting any time showcasing its latest gear. First up is a prototype 1080p beamer hailed as the industry’s first with a lamp-free design. Said unit also utilizes a PhlatLight LED light source and a BrilliantColor chipset, and if TI is to be believed, certain vendors will be shipping wares based on this stuff later this year. Moving on, we’re being (re)treated to the planet’s “first” 3D front projector (also known as the F10 AS3D), designed in cooperation with projectiondesign. Hidden beneath the big boys is the DLP Pico chipset for mobile applications, which will unsurprisingly pop up in pico projectors from companies like Optoma in late 2008 (Europe and Asia) / 2009 (the rest of us). Peek the full release after the break.

Gallery: TI showcases 3D projector and DLP Pico chipset at InfoComm

Texas Instruments DLP® Products Demonstrates Innovation Leadership with New Prototypes Including Lamp-Free Projector

DLP unveils the world’s first 3-D Front Projector and shows the first DLP Pico chipset product

Las Vegas – June 18, 2008: Texas Instruments (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today at InfoComm DLP® Products introduced the industry’s first home theater lamp-free projector that utilizes a PhlatLight™ LED light source and a BrilliantColor™ chipset. This technology demo delivers a superior 1080p picture for which DLP technology is known, while eliminating maintenance costs such as lamp replacements and filter changes required by some competing projector products. Multiple DLP customers have plans to develop DLP lamp-free LED-based projectors, including Optoma, with units expected to ship in late 2008. Similar to the deployment of DLP Product’s now popular BrilliantColor technology, the solid-state, lamp-free innovation will first be incorporated into home theater units and proliferate through corporate and education product lines thereafter.

DLP also introduced the first 3-D front projector with Norwegian manufacturer, projectiondesign, and the brand new pico-projector stand-alone product with Optoma. The 3-D portable high-resolution active stereoscopic single-chip projector is designed for the demanding visualization, simulation and entertainment environments in applications that have not been able to achieve this level of performance in the past, while the pico product uses a pioneering DLP Pico™ chipset for mobile applications.

Benefits of Lamp-free

Due to the inherent switching speed of the DLP chip and advancements in LEDs from Luminus, a leader in LED manufacturing, consumers will benefit from the increased picture quality, reliability and value found in this new projector category. The reflective nature of the mirrors on the DLP chip allow more light to reach the screen resulting in a 50% increase in color gamut range producing more than 200 trillion colors and a contrast ratio in excess of 500,000:1. The proprietary combination of LED illumination, coupled with DLP technology elevates picture quality to a new level while eliminating the traditional projection lamp.

In addition to the expanded color and contrast performance, the illumination system has an incredibly long life and offers up to 30% lower power usage and, most significantly, hundreds of dollars in savings from lamp purchases.

Due to the sealed DLP optics, DLP projectors are inherently prepared to withstand dusty environments and unlike projectors based on other technologies; do not require a filter to protect the optics. Most DLP projectors are filter-free. This important value attribute will remain true with new lamp-free DLP projectors, eliminating potential costly filter cleaning and replacements required by other technologies.

DLP is leveraging strengths from its other leading product lines for the new lamp-free projectors. Since 2006, lamp-free DLP HDTVs with LED-based illumination systems have been available from Samsung. To date, nearly 150,000 of these units have shipped.

DLP Products is featuring other market leading innovations at InfoComm booth #C909, Central Hall, including

o World’s first DLP 3-D Front Projector Product

The F10 AS3D is designed for the demanding scientific visualisation, simulation and entertainment environments. A full 120 Hz refresh rate enables flicker-free 3-D image. The F10 AS3D features a resolution of 1,400 x 1,050 pixels, and it is fully compatible with 1080p inputs. It is also compatible with both IR transmitted and DLP® Link 3-D shutter glasses. The F10 AS3D can be found on the projectiondesign booth, N5541 at InfoComm.

o World’s first DLP Pico-Projector Product

Optoma has announced plans to build a miniature stand-alone projector using the DLP Pico™ chipset. Product is expected to be available in limited distribution in Europe and Asia in late 2008 with a worldwide launch planned for 2009. There will be a demo at the DLP booth of this hand-held projector displaying composite video from a mobile business device.

“DLP Products has a proven legacy of “firsts” in the market and the projectors being demonstrated this year are examples of that commitment to innovation and commitment to our customers,” said Lars Yoder, vice president and business manager, TI’s DLP Front Projection Business Unit. “DLP Products is proud to enable our customers, who are the leading projector manufacturers globally, to be the best.”

For more information on DLP and DLP products please visit www.dlp.com or booth #C909, Central Hall at InfoComm.

# # #

About Texas Instruments DLP Products
DLP display technology from Texas Instruments offers clarity down to the most minute detail, delivering pictures rich with color, contrast and brightness to large-screen HDTVs and projectors for business, home, professional venue and digital cinema (DLP Cinema®). 50 of the world’s top projection and display manufacturers design, manufacture and market products based on DLP technology. DLP is the only HDTV technology built from a foundation in the digital cinema where it set the industry standard demonstrated by the deployment of DLP Cinema technology in 6,000 theatres worldwide. At the heart of every DLP chip is an array of up to 2.2 million microscopic mirrors which switch incredibly fast to create a high resolution, highly reliable, full color image. DLP technology’s chip architecture and inherent speed advantage provides razor-sharp images and excellent reproduction of fast motion video. Since early 1996, more than 16.5 million DLP subsystems have been shipped. For more information, please visit www.dlp.com.

About Texas Instruments:
Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) helps customers solve problems and develop new electronics that make the world smarter, healthier, safer, greener and more fun. A global semiconductor company, TI innovates through manufacturing, design and sales operations in more than 25 countries.

For more information: www.ti.com.

DLP and DLP Cinema are registered trademarks of Texas Instruments.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment, Portable Video

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 18th 2008 at 9:36AM
We’ve got good news and bad news. We’ll go ahead and get the latter out of the way. Mitsubishi, like everyone else today, is introducing a few new projectors, two of which you’ll likely care nothing about. Those are the education-focused XD500U-ST — which packs a paltry XGA (1,024 x 768) resolution — and the slightly less mind-numbing XD530U, which touts 3,000 lumens, an XGA resolution and wireless capabilities. Now, for the good stuff. The HC4900 (pictured) is being replaced by the 1080p HC5500, which is designed to operate at just 19dB in order to keep home theater enthusiasts smiling. Unfortunately, Mitsu hasn’t seen fit to disclose pricing / availability details just yet (outside of the tempting $2,495 sticker on the HC5500), but hopefully all of that will come in due time. Full release after the jump.

PRESS RELEASE OVERVIEW

Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America’s Presentation Products Division, known for its award-winning, high-quality presentation and display products, is announcing a number of new products today at InfoComm. Full press releases and photography are available at www.mitsubishi-presentations.com, Press Room.

Mitsubishi’s new XD500U-ST projector is designed for educators and presenters with limited space. The new XGA-resolution (1024 x 768 pixels) short-throw projector can be placed close to a screen or white board and achieve a relatively large picture. For example, the projector can display a 60-inch diagonal image when only 33-inches away, so presenters do not create distracting shadows while addressing their audience.

Mitsubishi is also showing it wireless projector, the XD530U, an XGA projector perfect for on-the-go presenters such as salespeople and teachers. For rooms with high ambient light, the XD530U blasts 3000 lumens of brightness; a center-lens design provides easy symmetrical set-up, and its instant shut-down feature makes this new projector easy to use in all types of environments.

Mitsubishi also brings higher-grade features to its newest 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) home theater projector, the HC5500, replacing Mitsubishi’s wildly successful HC4900, upgrading features for the same manufacturer’s suggested price of $2495. With a newly developed LCD panel cooling duct, the HC5500 is designed to be one of the quietest projectors in the world at 19 dBa, so you can focus on the movie instead of a distracting hum of the fan.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 18th 2008 at 10:25AM
We’ll admit, we reckoned we were coming along alright with our bar chords, but now we’re teetering on the edge of just giving up. Yeah, we’ve seen robotic mechanisms programmed to make meaningful sounds before, but The Trons are a bona fide band, man. We hear they’re going on tour as well — talk about a guaranteed sell out. Totally killer Sister Robot video after the jump.

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Yet again, Nvidia unveils another next-generation multi-core GPU to satisfy all the gamers and performance freaks out there. Enter the Nvidia GeForce GTX 200 series.

Holding true to their multi-GPU design (starting from the 9800 GX2), this series is a dream for Nvidia’s power-hungry enthusiasts. But the GTX 200 series is also incorporating NVIDIA CUDA technology – the world’s only C language environment that enables developers to write software to solve complex problems in a fraction of the time by tapping into multi-GPU technology – which means that this video card series is potentially a strong platform for numerous CUDA-enabled rich-media and visual-computing applications. Such applications are becoming more commonplace in the medical and scientific field because of the phenomenal boosts that CUDA gave programs when it was released. The series’ tagline “Beyond Gaming” really is not such a far-off notion because of CUDA.

Nvidia is also hyping on the boost that this series can give to everyday media tasks – video transcoding, for example. What would normally take hours could become a task that could be finished in minutes.

For gamers (who would normally be the first partakers of this new series), 448 to 512-bit processing is available, with GDDR3 already being a standard for Nvidia’s high-performance cards. Combined with PhysX (Nvidia recently acquired AEGIA) and SLI technology (Nvidia is moving now from three-way SLI to Quad-SLI), enthusiasts and gamers could be in for a whole new world of facial animation, flowing smoke and fog effects, awesome clothing flow simulation, staggering physical debris and explosions – all the standard eye-candy that we require to be norms.

Believed to be released in 2 variations, the GTX 260 and 280 (868MB and 1GB models respectively), expect a lot more hype and innovation as game developers and software designers move to catch up with the multi-GPU revolution.

Read [ZDNet]

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JVC may have beaten Panasonic with its three AVCHD camcorders announced yesterday, but two new Panasonic camcorders have something that the JVCs don’t have - 3MOS system which according to Panasonic provides superb video image quality. These two new Panasonic camcorders are the HDC-SD100 and HDC-HS100. Both camcorders include manual control features for zoom, focus, iris, shutter speed and white balance. They also boast of Panasonic’s new Intelligent Auto (iA) mode which automatically activates and makes video capturing easy and seamless.

As we said, these two camcorders employ a 3MOS system which has been newly developed by Panasonic based on its 3CCD technology. In simple terms, this system provides good image quality even in low-light environment, reproduces superb color, captures more vibrant, true-to-life colors and offers richer gradation of video resolution.

In addition to the 3MOS system, these two camcorders also features Panasonic’s HD Advanced Pure Color Engine and a Leica Dicomar lens which allows for the production of images in full-HD 1920×1080 resolution. These lens also allows the camcorders to have both 12x zoom power in a compact body.

Other features of these two camcorders include HD Writer 2.6 software for Windows, iMovie 08 for Apple, support for Panasonic’s VIERA link for connecting the camcorders to a VIERA HDTV using HDMI cable. It also allows the camcorder to be operated by a TV remote control.

The Panasonic HDC-SD100 and HDC-HS100 will be available sometime in September for $1,299.95 and $1,099.95 respectively.

Read [Market Wire] Via [Electronista]

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I’ve been desk shopping for the greater part of a week now and been grumbling excessively about all the ones that are poorly set up.  Most have no keyboard drawer and don’t understand that some people enjoy having more than one monitor.  Not only is this desk set up well as far as enough space for a decent amount of monitors as well as a keyboard drawer, it is way cooler than anything I’ve seen on the market.  The Executive Desk is apparently a fully functional visual and kinetic desk as well.

It was made by a self-taught artist, Dale Mathis, who managed to teach himself a skill that translates into making desks that go for large amounts of cash.  Some of the gears in the desk will actually move, as opposed to just sitting there and looking pretty.  Although, from the looks of the video not all of the gears are meant to move.  The massive desk is being sold for a hefty price of $21,000.  Maybe I could just sell my car and get one, although, it might help if my car was even worth $21,000.

Source: slipperybrick

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I’ve been desk shopping for the greater part of a week now and been grumbling excessively about all the ones that are poorly set up.  Most have no keyboard drawer and don’t understand that some people enjoy having more than one monitor.  Not only is this desk set up well as far as enough space for a decent amount of monitors as well as a keyboard drawer, it is way cooler than anything I’ve seen on the market.  The Executive Desk is apparently a fully functional visual and kinetic desk as well.

It was made by a self-taught artist, Dale Mathis, who managed to teach himself a skill that translates into making desks that go for large amounts of cash.  Some of the gears in the desk will actually move, as opposed to just sitting there and looking pretty.  Although, from the looks of the video not all of the gears are meant to move.  The massive desk is being sold for a hefty price of $21,000.  Maybe I could just sell my car and get one, although, it might help if my car was even worth $21,000.

Source: slipperybrick

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A TV with its own robot?  While the concept might be a bit Blade Runner-esque, Bang & Olufsen says the technology will ensure rich and natural colors throughout the lifespan of their plasma screens.

The audio and video equipment manufacturer recently launched the sleek, 50-inch BeoVision 9 plasma TV.  The device boasts of an Automatic Colour Management technology that adjusts the color temperature of the plasma screen to compensate for the tendency of TVs to feature a yellowish tinge in the picture after hundreds of hours of use.

Here is where the robot comes in.  When a user activates the Automatic Color Management technology, a short robotic arm with a camera swings down from the upper portion of the screen.  The camera films a test picture on the screen, analyzes the light and dark areas, then adjusts the color balance to correct coloring errors caused by aging.  The feature automatically activates every 120 hours of use but can also be manually activated.

Aside from that, the device also automatically adjusts the brightness of its image according to the ambient light of its location.  The product ships with a built-in center channel speaker with acoustic lens and digital surround sound capabilities.  The price, at $19,900, is a bit steep –- if only it restocks its own beer, perhaps couch potatoes won’t mind.

Read [Twice]

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by Darren Murph, posted Jun 18th 2008 at 7:54AM
With DOCSIS 3.0 (and the corresponding 50Mbps download speeds) being deploying in varying parts of America, Verizon understands what it’s up against. Reportedly, the carrier is gearing up to push its 50Mbps FiOS internet — which is currently only available in a few of its more favored states — to its entire US footprint. Best of all, we’re hearing that all 16 FiOS-enabled states could have access to the service as early as next week, and if you’re anxious to sign up, just know that it’ll run you $139.95 per month with an annual contract. Thankfully, Verizon is also planning to boost speeds in the basic and middle tiers as well, with the former going from 5Mbps to 10Mbps and the latter going from 15Mbps to 20Mbps. Yeah, we like where this is headed, but we’ve still got aways to go before we can even sniff Sigbritt Löthberg’s connection.

[Via Reuters]

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