Hasta La Gadget!

Vizio officially announced its 2013 HDTV lineup this morning and now we’ve gotten to see the new sets in person. At the top of the list are the company’s XVT Ultra models at 55-, 65- and 70-inches, which will bring 4K video to living rooms on an unknown date later this year. The company had the 70-inch set on hand showing some native 4K footage, and as you’d expect, it looked good. Viewing angles approach 180 degrees, and the new design’s 10mm bezel is barely noticeable. Speaking of which, the industrial design on the XVT line is understated and premium, with an anodized silver metal band surrounding the edge of the set and minimal branding.

In addition to the 70-inch set, Vizio also had a prototype 55-inch 3D XVT model that was most impressive. Its viewing angles were just as good as the 70-inch set, but the highlight is its glasses-free 3D. Vizio’s implementation of the technology takes full advantage of the 4K resolution to provide a high quality 3D picture, and its software maintains a focused picture from all angles. Of course, there are sweet spots for viewing the full 3D depth affect, but outside of those zones, 2D picture quality was maintained. Unfortunately, Vizio hasn’t committed to a 2013 release date for glasses-free 3D, but the rest of the lineup, set to debut later this year, will still have the firm’s glasses-dependent passive 3D technology. Interested? There’s plenty of pics of the new sets in our gallery below.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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At Fujifilm’s press conference today, the company announced that both the X100s and X20 will hit stores at the end of March, with the X100s running you $1,300 and the X20 shipping for less than half, at roughly 600 bucks. A new 55-200mm lens will ship in April, with more options planned for later this year. We had a chance to check out both models, and while the X20 appears to be a perfectly capable shooter, the X100s is definitely the premium variant here. The camera has a very solid feel and quite an elegant retro design, as you might expect based on its predecessor. The digital split image display is mighty nifty as well, as we first saw just this afternoon. Flip through our gallery below for a closer look at both cameras, then jump past the break for a hands-on demo of the X100s from Fujifilm.

Continue reading Fujfilm announces pricing and availability for X100s and X20 (update: hands-on!)

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When I think of Pantech, I don’t have too many fond memories. But the Android 4.0-based Discover might change that. Available starting January 11 from AT&T for $50, the Discover is an 4G LTE smartphone with a 4.8-inch HD display (1280×720) and a crazy 12.6-megapixel camera that shoots full HD video at 30fps. More »

Worried about midnight intruders? Netgear’s VueZone camera—already a popular security solution—just got night vision powers. More »

Although the UltraViolet common file format (CFF) was supposed to offer the promise of download once, play anywhere sometime in 2012, that year is behind us. There is some hope that 2013 will indeed be the year your UltraViolet Digital copies, that were bundled with a disc or upgraded via a disc-to-digital program, as Dolby has proudly announced that three of the major studios have chosen Dolby Digital Plus (aka E-AC-3) as their audio codec of choice for their CFF encodes. Essentially this means the most efficient surround sound codec will give them the ability to deliver high quality downloadable versions of your movies with up to 7.1 surround sound. The following press release stops short of specific dates and titles, but we are promised thousands of movies and TV series from Sony, Universal and Warner when UltraViolet CFF launches later this year.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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