Hasta La Gadget!

Sony just posted its yearly results today, and while a ¥40.8 billion ($439 million) loss is never a good thing, it’s at least a marked improvement from last year’s staggering $1 billion drop into the red, which was the company’s first loss in 14 years. LCD TVs and cameras were Sony’s big electronics sellers, while PS3 sales went up to 13 million from 10.1 million last year — and hey, Sony’s console actually became profitable at the end of the year as production costs have gone down. Now for the bad news: PSP sales were down to 9.9m from 14.4 last year, with game sales dropping to 44.4m from 50.3m units, while PS2 hardware went down to 7.2m from 7.7m units and PS2 software fell sharply from 83.5m units to 35.7m units. That’s not completely unexpected, as the PS2 can’t last forever and the PSP is getting long in the tooth, but it means that Sony faces some serious pressure to hit its target of 15m PS3s sold this year to pick up the slack and help it hit its goal of posting a ¥50 billion ($541 million) profit next year. Let’s hope that Move controller lives up to the hype, right? Sony’s also counting on 3D to help it get there, and wonder of wonders, it also expects Sony Ericsson to hit profitability, so that X10 mini pro had better be a big improvement over the Xperia X10. We’ll see if Sir Howard can keep all these various ships going in the right direction while still keeping the rest of Sony’s diverse operations (like its profitable life insurance business) in line — it should be an interesting year.

Sony posts another huge annual loss, but PS3 sales are up originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 May 2010 17:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last week’s Finetech Japan 2010 expo allowed display manufacturers to show and tell each other about their latest innovations and advancements. One of the unquestioned highlights was NewSight‘s implementation of parallax barrier technology on displays up to 70 inches in size. The company is claiming its demo unit as the world’s largest glasses-free 3D screen, but regrettably deprives us of any further details. All we’re told is that the parallax barrier is “affixed to commercial-grade” LCDs, which suggests to us that perhaps the technique and hardware could be applied atop your favorite brand’s existent 2D models. Of course, that’d only matter if these displays deliver a manifestly better picture and experience than what we have now, but it’s looking like we’ll have to wait a little bit longer to find out.

NewSight’s 70-inch 3DTV keeps the glasses away with its parallax barrier tech originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, here’s a way to make those 3D tellies attractive — slim them down to unreasonable proportions and kill as much of the bezel as you can. The newly announced LX9500 isn’t quite as skinny as the stuff we saw LG show off at CES, but at 22.3mm it still makes the majority of laptops look on in envy. Paired to a pleasingly minimal 16mm bezel, it makes for quite the gorgeous living room accessory, whether on or off (one more pic after the break). The new LED-backlit set will offer a full 1080p resolution and a 400Hz refresh rate, which is more than enough to make those active shutter glasses useful. A 10,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio is given, but that number wouldn’t impress us even if it was the total US national debt to 1, we want real contrast numbers or nothing at all. Anyhow, Reuters is reporting a 4.7 million Won ($4,134) launch price for the 47-inch model, which should go on sale a week from now in Korea. A 55-inch variant should also be available when these 3DTVs make the journey westwards in May.

Continue reading LG unveils first Full LED 3D HDTV — the 22.3mm-thin LX9500

LG unveils first Full LED 3D HDTV — the 22.3mm-thin LX9500 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While it might have been a pipe dream back in ’09, Taiwanese display manufacturer AU Optronics is firmly committed to blasting our eyeballs in 2010, with a monstrous 65-inch HD LCD panel ready for all the 3D and pseudo-3D content (we’re looking at you, G-Force) you have on offer. AUO isn’t hedging its bets on this one, either; at FPD China 2010, the company announced that they’re using a polarized solution with cheap, $2 to 3 glasses to generate the 3D effect. Sure, polarized is the preferred method for most theatres, but it’s often more expensive than active shutter tech for an in-home user — and can come with some serious visual tradeoffs like permanent ghosting or halved vertical resolution. We won’t know for sure until we get hands-on, but either way, expect to see AUO’s panels in a branded 3D HDTV near you early next year, or just a few months before HDI drops a 103-inch monster of its own.

AUO’s 65-inch 3D HDTV panel headed for the conveyer belt in 2H 2010, boasts polarized specs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In case you hadn’t noticed, there was some trouble brewing in the NVIDIA camp. After ages of reigning atop the land of stereoscopic 3D playback on the PC, NVIDIA is finally being confronted with a real, bona fide standard for 3D, with zero GPUs capable of meeting it. The current NVIDIA 3D Vision-compatible cards pump out the necessary pixels over DisplayPort or dual DVI plugs, while the official spec for 3D TVs is an HDMI 1.4 plug that accepts data from both frames at once. We were in doubt there for a moment, but it turns out NVIDIA’s cards upgrade to 1.4 just fine, and all 3D Vision customers will be getting this as a free upgrade later this spring. NVIDIA will also be offering this 3DTV Play software in a standalone version for $40 to folks who don’t want to bother with NVIDIA’s 3D Vision stuff at all (with HDMI 1.4 you can just use the stereoscopic glasses that come with your fancy new 3D TV, no need for NVIDIA’s setup). NVIDIA is naturally hitting all the high points of the 1.4 spec, with 1080p24, 720p60 (the official gaming spec), and 720p50. The cards will also support 3D Blu-ray. So, just about time to splurge big on that home theater PC? We don’t know… is it just us, or does that guy and his couch look a little lonely?

NVIDIA’s 3DTV Play finally solves the HDMI 1.4 gap for 3D Vision originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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