Hasta La Gadget!

Panasonic’s 65-inch Smart VIERA WT600 UHD TV may have hit the market as a “me too” 4K TV, but it sure does look nice — even when placed right next to some of the competition. Thanks to its embedded H.264 decoder, we saw it run 4K content straight off an SDXC card and streamed from the internet (after about 10-15 seconds of loading). Interestingly, while the TV supports the fresh and still-unfamiliar HDMI 2.0 spec, a good chunk our demo session was done over DisplayPort 1.2a to show the display’s ability to pump out 60fps 4K content — unlike existing competitors, which cap out at 30fps. Aside from faster frame rates, it was apparent in our viewing session that the out-of-box settings on a Sony XBR-65X900A ($5,499) had overly boosted reds, while both it and a Samsung F9000 ($5,000) dropped in for the demo showed pronounced haloing. Now we just want to see all of these TVs running 4K content fed from a player using HDMI 2.0 — whenever that’s fully standardized.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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What could be better than a live action Halo TV-series? Why, a fully fledged next-generation sequel, of course. Microsoft has confirmed that a new Halo game is making its way to the Xbox One, calming the doubts of fans who were concerned that the franchise was shifting to less traditional platforms. According to a Microsoft rep, this next-gen Halo (actual name to be determined) will not only “take full advantage of the power and flexibility of Xbox One,” but will also be buffered by MS’ cloud computing and, in a first for the franchise, run at a “blistering” 60 fps. Look for it to launch sometime in 2014.

Update: Ballmer and Co. just published the video online and we’ve slotted it in right after the break.

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Filed under: Gaming, HD, Microsoft

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