Hasta La Gadget!

Look, we’ve seen an awful lot of HDTVs in our day — one lap around the average CEDIA show floor makes your local Best Buy look awfully small — and to this day we’ve yet to put our peepers on a more stunning set than Mitsubishi’s LaserVue HDTV. Sure, it’s fat, ugly and expensive, but the image is otherworldly. Before Mitsu can even take the logical next step, a California startup has arisen to introduce what it calls the world’s first laser-based 3D HDTV. We’re talking 1080p 3D like you’ve never seen before, with CTO Edmund Sandberg noting that this production is smoother than RealD, Dolby, film and pretty much every other 3D solution. The secret here is in the speed; this set is so fast that the image “no longer needs to flash from one eye to the other,” and no flashing should equate to no headaches. Too bad there’s no planned release date, but we’re still cautiously optimistic for a sneak peek (in addition to the video past the break) at CES 2010.

[Via OLED-Display]

Continue reading HDI concocts 100-inch laser-based 3D HDTV, calls rivaling technology child’s play

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

HDI concocts 100-inch laser-based 3D HDTV, calls rivaling technology child’s play originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Got a thing for glossy black, narrow bezels and decent resolutions? If so, why not have a gander at Acer‘s latest duo? Announced this fine morning over in Japan, the HX2000 is a 20-inch panel with a 1,600 x 900 resolution, 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 300 nits of brightness and a five millisecond response time. The big brother has admittedly garnered the majority of our love, as the 23-inch FHX2300 packs a 40,000:1 contrast ratio, 300 nits of brightness, a five millisecond response time, an HDMI socket and a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) resolution. There’s no word yet on pricing and availability for the little guy, but the large card should launch soon in the Land of the Rising Sun for around ¥20,000 ($214).

Filed under: Displays

Acer serves up HX2000 and FHX3200 LCD monitors for overseas lovers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Panasonic’s PT-AE3000 has gone over quite well in the home theater space, with its 1080p resolution and gorgeous image quality winning over more than a few projector junkies. But given that there’s always room for improvement, the outfit has today introduced the PT-AE4000, an ever-so-slightly refreshed version that looks essentially identical to its predecessor. The Full HD native resolution and 1,600 ANSI lumens remain unchanged, though the contrast ratio has been bumped from 60,000:1 to 80,000:1 and Panny has outfitted it with a new “red rich lamp” and dynamic iris. Finally, this beamer supposedly eliminates those nasty Cinemascope issues that some users were seeing on the AE3000, though the estimated £2,000 ($3,255) asking price still feels a bit steep when you consider the alternatives.

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

Panasonic issues mildly revamped PT-AE4000 1080p projector at IFA originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It is done. MIPS Technologies has demonstrated its enhanced implementation of Android running in 1080p via extended libraries to support hardware graphics acceleration and decoding on Sigma Designs hardware, a portent of set-top boxes yet to come. Of course, without any video or pictures or video of the blessed event (ISB Corp’s previous OMAP based effort is pictured above) it’s hard to tell why Android coming to TV is such a great idea, if its cousin widgets are any indication, there’s a chance of being high on pre-release hype but low on desirability once it reaches the market. Still, the Open Embedded Software Foundation pledges to continue on shoehorning Android into devices beyond the mobile handset, but if it’s shut down by a band of torch wielding villagers demanding the monster be put down, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

[Via SlashGear & LinuxforDevices]

Filed under: Home Entertainment

1080p Android demo’d, set-top boxes prepare for a new master originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We always suspected the iPhone 3GS was capable of 1080p HD video playback, and now we’ve got proof. Although Apple lists the iPhone 3Gs’s max video playback res at just 640×480, iLounge linked to Chinese forum post claiming that the 3GS could do 30Mbps 1080p playback earlier today — and when we saw that the only thing we needed to do to test it out was download the free FileAid app, well, you know how we’ve just spent the last 20 minutes. We tested out a bunch of HD trailers from Apple’s QuickTime trailer site, some videos we shot with a Lumix DMC-GH1 and some other random videos with general success, but there were some major hiccups: high bitrate 720p video off the GH1 stuttered during playback, and loading the Avatar trailer consistently crashed the phone’s audio driver until we restarted. We tried the same thing on an iPhone 3G and just got error messages at almost every resolution, so it seems like it’s a combination of the 3GS’s extra horsepower and different built-in software at work here — software that’s clearly not ready for prime-time, as evidenced by the bugs. We’re hoping Apple is polishing that up and getting ready to unlock this functionality, since it’d be sweet to just plug into an HDTV and play video — anyone listening out there in Cupertino? Video after the break.

Read – Apple iPhone specs
Read – Chinese forum posts claiming 30Mbps 1080p playback

Continue reading iPhone 3GS totally capable of 1080p video playback

Filed under: Cellphones

iPhone 3GS totally capable of 1080p video playback originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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