Hasta La Gadget!

At its home entertainment event in New York City today, Samsung filled in the details about the HDTV lineup we first glimpsed at CES 2013 in January. If you recall, several high-profile sets were first unveiled at the show, and pricing is unsurprisingly steep to match. The 85-inch S9 UHD TV, with a slick, easel-style frame and “Precision Black Pro” display tech, will go for $39,999 when it launches at the end of March.

Samsung also announced pricing for its Smart Evolution Kit, a hardware set of products — including a quad-core processor, GPU and memory — that plugs into the back of a Sammy-designed TV to keep hardware and software up to date as new models are released. The kit will go for $300 when it debuts in May, and it wil come bundled with the latest Smart Touch Remote. And finally — because what ultra-luxe home entertainment system is complete without high-end audio? — there’s the HW-F750 soundbar, which incorporates the company’s vacuum tube technology and boasts a wireless subwoofer. The HW-F750 will connect with select Samsung Smart TVs via Bluetooth, and it will set you back $799 when it goes on sale in March. Hit up the press release past the break for more info.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Samsung

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At first, you might think what you’re looking at is just a cool illuminated wall sculpture. Well it is that, but it’s actually more. It’s actually a weather forecaster with a tangible user interface.

This interactive LED art was assembled by Instructables contributor and Parsons design student Adiel Fernandez. He built the wall unit using a set of three sconces found at CB2, rigged with a digitally-addressable LED scrip, cut into pieces that he placed into the sconces. His original concept was to simply rig the sconce with flickering LEDs to make them look like candles without the inconvenience of actual candles and flame, but ultimately ended up with a much more interactive pieces.

The wall sculpture is controlled by a small acrylic cube with icons on each side. Inside the cube is a gyroscope, accelerometer, XBee radio and lithium-polymer battery. Rotating the cube to face an icon upwards will switch the LEDs between 6 modes, described in the words of its creator as follows:

• Power:  “The cube is normally off to save power and will not recognize any commands or orientation. By having the power icon facing up and shaking the cube, the cube is now awake, will pulse the inner light that shines through the icons, and will recognize which side is facing up to allow other modes to be accessed. By spinning the cube while its on and the power side is up, a fun rainbow display is turned on and off.”
• Flame: “When the cube is on and the flame side is facing up, the lights in the sconces will glow and flicker like real candle flames (a little difficult to see in the video). By rotating the cube clockwise, the number of candles lit are incremented and likewise, rotating it counter clockwise decreases the number of lights lit.”
• High Temperature: “Having this side face up while the cube is on will display the high temperature of the day in red light. The lights will display the first digit of the temperature on the left side by lighting up the number of lights equivalent to that digit. The lights then pause then display the second digit of the temperature on the right side. For example, if the temp. is 47 degrees (like in the video), the lights will show 4 lights on the left, pause, then display 7 lights on the right.”
• Low Temperature: “Similar to the low temp side, this side will show the low temperature of the day in a cool cyan hue.”
• Precipitation (snow/rain): “This will display the percent chance of precipitation similar to how the other temperatures are displayed in blue. Its a little difficult to tell the difference between the cyan and blue in the video but easier in person.”
• Travel (plane around the world): “For a bit of whimsy, I decided to make the bottom of the cube display the temperature of some fantasy destination set by the user in green light. In this case it’s set to Honolulu, Hawaii, hopefully making it easier to bare the cold winter with hopes of a future vacation.”

Here’s a look at the controller cube in action:

And here’s a brief demo of the wall as it lights up:

At this point, the temperature data is hard-coded into the system, but Adiel plans to get it wired up to an internet data source soon. There aren’t too many more details on the build available, but you can see what there is over on Instructables.

We got a peek at Sony’s 2013 HDTV lineup during CES in January, and now the company has announced they’re starting to roll out and confirmed official pricing. The new sets add features like NFC, MHL and Miracast support to certain models, while the top of the line W900A is its first to use Quantum Dot technology in combination with edge LED lighting. Sony’s brought back its old Triluminos brand name for the technology, which it claims provides a wider color gamut while keeping prices quite a bit lower than its last TVs to rock the tag, the now-retired XBR8 series.

There’s no word on the XBR series, but in the lower W- and R- lines the KDL-W900A is the only one with Triluminos. It also brings an extra long internal speaker duct for improved sound and standard NFC remote, and the 55-inch model will carry an MSRP of $3,299. The step down W802A version keeps MHL standard, has the NFC remote as an option and comes in 55- and 47-inch versions that start at $1,799. The 32-inch W650A will ship for $799. The R-Series dodges some of the higher end features, but some still include 3D, WiFi, RVU and the Sony Entertainment Network suite of apps including Netflix, Hulu Plus and more. The R550A has all that and is available in 70-, 60- and 50-inch versions that start at $1,399. Hit the source link for info on more models, or just keep an eye out on (digital) store shelves as these leak into retail.

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony

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Source: Sony Blog

Philips has opened up its hue LED lighting system to external developers, allowing coders outside of the company to tap into the multicolored wireless bulbs and link them into new apps and web services. The new hue API, as well as an iOS app development kit, will allow for hue-compatible apps – such as custom color temperature systems for photographers, color alerts linked with social networks like Facebook, and more – to be released directly into the App Store. Meanwhile, Philips too is working on adding native features, some of which we can expect in the next few months.

In addition to software and web links, hue’s new-found openness will allow it to integrate more cohesively with other home automation devices. Each of the bulbs – which hide multicolor LEDs underneath the frosted glass casing – has its own ZigBee radio for mesh-networking; that not only talks to the hue ethernet base station, but can communicate with other ZigBee devices such as security kit.

It won’t be an Apple-only affair, either. Philips is starting off with the iOS toolkit, but already has a controller app for Android, and says platforms other than Apple’s will be getting APIs next. This Friday, March 15, meanwhile, Philips will sponsor a hue developer day intended to get more ideas off the ground.

As for Philips’ own functionality, the company continues to work on its official hue app. In the pipeline are smart scheduling and geo-fencing, Philips tells us, which will allow more comprehensive automation control over what lights come on automatically and when, and lighting schemes that are turned on and off whenever a user comes into proximity of the home.

We’ve more on hue in our full review.

Philips opens hue connected lighting to devs with iOS API is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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I’m a big fan of Philips Hue LED bulbs. In fact, I’ve got two rooms of my house outfitted with the bulbs, and continue to add more. There’s something just so cool about walking into my home theater, pulling out my iPhone, and changing the colors in the room to set the mood for a movie or video game session.

But while the hardware is extraordinary, if there’s one complaint about the Hue, it’s the relatively limited smartphone app that Philips provides. Sure, it gets the job done, but opening up the platform to other developers will only result in more and better apps. Well, I’m happy to say that’s exactly what Philips has done.

Philips today announced its long-awaited software developer program for the Hue. The developer program provides open APIs, development guides and an iOS SDK, so you can easily make your own smartphone and tablet apps to control the bulbs.

While there’s already a growing community that’s been playing with the bulbs for several months now, it’s great to have officially-supported docs and tools from Philips themselves. Having these tools in hand should enable the creation of applications which can change bulb colors to music, video and other ideas which I haven’t even thought of yet. Heck, with enough Hue bulbs and the right app developer, you could probably make a (ridiculously expensive) video wall using the bulbs.

Developers interested in creating their own applications for the Hue can check out the developer platform at developers.meethue.com.

For those of you who didn’t jump on the Hue bandwagon when it first came out due to availability issues, they’re once again readily available from the Apple Store. The 3-bulb and bridge starter kit sells for $199.95 (USD), and additional bulbs sell for $59. Now that the SDK is available, I’m anxiously awaiting additional hardware from Philips. I’d love to see different lamp sizes and full-color wall dimmers (and lower prices) if you’re listening.