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While Blu-ray is still an untested novelty for many consumers, Panasonic is already talking about 3-D Blu-ray in 2010. The news comes just months after Philips showcased its impressive 3-D TVs and points the way towards a future where we can all watch 3-D TV at home without the silly cardboard specs. Panasonic is working on a Blu-ray Disc capable of storing 2-channel 1080p 3D pictures, along with an HDMI cable to carry the video to a ’suitable’ TV. The best thing about the proposal being made to the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) though is that Panasonic is using existing Blu-ray and HDMI technology which will help it - and us - avoid another dumb proprietary HD format spat.Images are encoded with the 2-channel encoder already part of MPEG-4 and the video for right and left eye each offer Full HD resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels. The discs will also be playable on existing Blu-players and Panasonic thinks the tech will be ready for rollout in 2010. We may not need the 3-D glasses but it’s possible we’ll need a TV with the ability to handle 3-D signals. There’s always a catch. Also, with Blu-ray titles still trickling onto the market after more than 2-years out, how long before we see a lot of decent - yes, decent - 3-D titles?-Martin Lynch TV 3D blu-ray

Original post by nafiz

We’ve heard a lot about Blu-ray in the past couple of years but is the technology any closer to making it into your home this Christmas? This time last year the high-defintion (HD) war was in full swing between Blu-ray and HD DVD but dedicated players [excluding the PS3] were not cheap. Now, a year on, Blu-ray stands alone and the path to HD immortality and becoming the ‘next DVD′ stands clear but are players cheap enough to tempt you to stick one in your stocking this Silly Season?Last year, dedicated Blu-ray players - apart from being few and far between in the UK - boasted wallet-crushing price tags ranging from £400-800. This time out, prices are a more reasonable £200 and [much] higher, but you can also get older Blu-ray spinners for around £150. So, will you be taking the Blu-ray plunge or holding out? Let us know.-Martin Lynch blu-ray movies christmas

Original post by nafiz

Last Christmas, Blu-ray players costs an obscene amount of money and, while they aren’t exactly cheap now, they are heading in the right direction and becoming affordable for most consumers. Sharp’s BD-HP21H has just hit the UK and despite the sticker price of £250, you can find this player online for a shade under £200. This is a Profile 1.1 player with 1080p support and 24 frames per second (fps) playback, meaning the movies run at the same speed they were filmed at and make motion-scenes much smoother and clearer. The machine also promises to upscale your DVDs to near-HD quality and the HDMI 1.3 jack offers support for Deep Color as well as advanced sound formats like Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Advanced.Blu-ray players can take an age to start up but the BD-HP21H has a Quick Start feature which means you’ll be up and running in 10 seconds. There’s no memory card slot but you can read JPEG photos from blank CDS. And for those worried about bills, the player promises low power consumption: 26W in operation and 0.5W in stand-by.-Martin Lynch blu-ray movies

Original post by nafiz

Last Christmas, Blu-ray players costs an obscene amount of money and, while they aren’t exactly cheap now, they are heading in the right direction and becoming affordable for most consumers. Sharp’s BD-HὕH has just hit the UK and despite the sticker price of £250, you can find this player online for a shade under £200. This is a Profile 1.1 player with 1080p support and 24 frames per second (fps) playback, meaning the movies run at the same speed they were filmed at and make motion-scenes much smoother and clearer. The machine also promises to upscale your DVDs to near-HD quality and the HDMI 1.3 jack offers support for Deep Color as well as advanced sound formats like Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Advanced.Blu-ray players can take an age to start up but the BD-HὕH has a Quick Start feature which means you’ll be up and running in 10 seconds. There’s no memory card slot but you can read JPEG photos from blank CDS. And for those worried about bills, the player promises low power consumption: 26W in operation and 0.5W in stand-by.-Martin Lynch blu-ray movies

Original post by nafiz

If you’re lucky enough not to have been affected by the economic crisis (ie: you’re filthy rich) then why not laugh in the face of the rest of the planet by picking up a ridiculously big TV? Runco has recently announced a 100″ VideoWall TV (the VX-100HD) to compete with Panasonic’s similarly extravagant 103″ plasma. It’s actually a rear-projection design but is different to most being completely self-contained, which means the rear assembly is about a third of the size of a traditional screen of this type. It’s capable of 1080p resolutions, a contrast ratio in excess of 5000:1 and features ‘positive pressure cooling’ that allows for quiet operation and ‘high altitude operation’ so it can work up to 3km above sea level, so you’ll be fine in your penthouse suite. It’s a little more expensive than Pannie’s screen though, £26,300 to be exact, but look at it this way, you’ll be saving a cool £657.50 thanks to Mr. Darling’s generosity. - Paul Lester [CNet] Runco TV rear-projection

Original post by nafiz

If you′re lucky enough not to have been affected by the economic crisis (ie: you′re filthy rich) then why not laugh in the face of the rest of the planet by picking up a ridiculously big TV? Runco has recently announced a 100″ VideoWall TV (the VX-100HD) to compete with Panasonic’s similarly extravagant 103″ plasma. It’s actually a rear-projection design but is different to most being completely self-contained, which means the rear assembly is about a third of the size of a traditional screen of this type. It’s capable of 1080p resolutions, a contrast ratio in excess of 5000:1 and features ‘positive pressure cooling′ that allows for quiet operation and ‘high altitude operation’ so it can work up to 3km above sea level, so you′ll be fine in your penthouse suite. It’s a little more expensive than Pannie’s screen though, £26,300 to be exact, but look at it this way, you′ll be saving a cool £657.50 thanks to Mr. Darling’s generosity. - Paul Lester [CNet] Runco TV rear-projection

Original post by nafiz

Are you the kind of eagle-eyed AV fan who can spot a grainy standard-def TV image at a 1,000 paces? If so, then bully for you because some of the latest research from the US shows that 1-in-5 HDTV owners can′t tell if they are watching HD glory or standard-def tat. This is the sixth annual survey on this topic by the Leichtman Research Group (LRG) and it seems that folk are still as observant as ever, although the number of confused people is falling. From a survey of over 1300 households, 18% of viewers thought they were watching HD when in fact they were watching the same SD stuff they were used to.This is down from 25% in 2006.It may seem like a lot a but when you factor into the mix that they were watching highly compressed HD broadcast feeds - which are a long way from the type of HD you′ve seen on Blu-ray discs - you can understand where some of the confusion arises. I recently watched a HD episode of Burn Notice on FX HD and was surprised and sorely disappointed at just how much image grain there was [especially for dimly lit scenes] thanks to the compression. Compared to the quality of video on Discovery HD, it made watching hippos rolling the mud a more tempting viewing experience. Retailers were also blamed for the confusion. It seems that just 4-out-of-10 were told, when buying their skinny HDTVS, that they would need to invest in some HD broadcasts to make the most of them. Despite the confusion though, HDTV sales are booming. Sadly with HD, the gap between the popularity of HDTVs and the paucity of HD content is still massive.-Martin Lynch [PC World] HDTV TV HD

Original post by nafiz

Last month Sky HD subscribers saw seven new channels emerge to help consolidate the company’s position as the most comprehensive HD selection in Europe, and it looks like one more will be squeezed in before this end of the month. Disney will be launching an HD version of its Cinemagic channel in time for Christmas, which takes the new total to an impressive 29. It seems like good timing for us as we’ve noticed that Christmas TV certainly isn’t what it used to be over the last few years, with very little (if anything) in the way of classics like James Bond, Indiana Jones and Star Wars. A bit of Pixar would do nicely while you’re getting over your Christmas lunch then, and it lines up movies like The Incredibles and Ratatouille along with classics such as Tinkerbell and Sleeping Beauty for the kids. Like the last seven channels added to the HD range, there’s no specific date set at which it’ll be available, but we can confirm that it will be in December. With prices for Sky HD boxes falling all the time, can you think of many more reasons not to upgrade? - Paul Lester [EnGadget] Pixar Sky HD

Original post by nafiz

Onkyo does a fine line in home cinema receivers and has just now launched its first Blu-ray players in time for the Christmas rush. This is not the company’s first foray into HD as Onkyo backed the defeated HD DVD format in the HD battle but, thankfully, profits-over-pride gives us another quality Blu-ray spinner in the DV-B𐯾. It costs a shade under £400 which means it’s in the mid-to-high end of the fledgling Blu-ray player market but it does pack a lot in. It has a HDMI v1.3 port for Deep Color compatibility, 1080p support with 24fps playback. It supports Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio surround sound which is about as good as it gets, and there’s an upscaler for making your DVDs look better than they already do. A useful add-on is the ability to play DivX files from disc or SD Cards. Be aware though that this is a Profile 1.1 player, not a 2.0 one, which means there’s no support for the BD Live interactive features on some newer discs. That said, a lot of people couldn’t care less about interactive content, there’s not a lot of BD Live content out there and much of that leaves a lot to be desired.-Martin Lynch [Onkyo]

Original post by nafiz

Today marks the day you’ll be able to get your mitts on the first Freesat+ digital TV recorder, the Humax FOXSAT-HDR. As well as offering access to all those free-to-air standard definition TV and radio channels, it’s the only device that will let you record the Freesat HD channels from the BBC and ITV. It sports a whopping 320GB had disk drive and a hefty price tag of £299 - which is steep - but, unlike Sky’s subscription service, you don’t have to pay a monthly fee. Check out the key features after the jump.*320GB hard drive to store up to 80 hours of HD programming, or up to 200 hours of standard definition shows *Eight day electronic programme guide to plan your viewing and recording with ease *Series recording to automatically capture all the episodes of your favourite shows *Live pause and instant rewind to give you full control over your viewing *Option to record programmes in standard and high-definition when shows are broadcast in both formats *Split recordings for two-part programmes that may have a break in the middle for a news bulletin, such as films *Digital text and interactive services According to Freesat, the current HD highlights are Strictly Come Dancing, Little Britain USA, In the Night Garden and Little Dorrit on BBC HD while ITV HD is chipping in UEFA Champions League matches, England Internationals, the FA Cup and teen drama Britannia High. The box goes on sale across ’selected’ John Lewis, Comet, Argos and Dixons stores [plus some independent retailers] this weekend.-Martin Lynch TV BBC freesat

Original post by nafiz

Most modern HDTVs come with two or three HDMI ports but these won’t last long if you start piling up the games consoles, media streamers and set top boxes. To get around this you can buy an HDMI switcher, which is usually a fairly meaty device with a remote control that you need to use to tell it which port to activate. Not so with the IXOS Studio XH𐹬 though, which is a dual-port switcher that changes automatically. It supports HDMI version 1.3a, full 1080p resolutions and the connectors are gold plated to help prevent loss of quality. There’s also signal enhancer built in that helps prevent loss of quality at up to 15 meters. The XH𐹬 is pretty compact so we can imagine this being tucked neatly behind your A/V equipment quietly going about its business. It’s available now for £49.99, more details from the official site below. - Paul Lester [IXOS] IXOS HDMI home cinema

Original post by nafiz

New consumer research has found that 34% of U.S. households have at least one HDTV set, double the percentage of households that had such TVs two years ago.

The growth of HDTV sets has largely been driven by on-going consumer purchasing of TV sets coupled with a dwindling supply of lower-end non-HDTV sets being sold, according to the Leichtman Research Group.

Overall, 22% of all households purchased a new TV set in the past 12 months, with 43% of this group spending more than $1,000 on a new TV.

These findings are based on a survey of 1,302 households throughout the United States.

Now if we could just get the other two-thirds to pick up a HDTV set we’d be all better off … would that help the global economy or what?

More at Multichannel News.

Tags: hdtv

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds

We first caught wind of a slightly revamped PSP months ago, and the long-awaited handheld — complete with a new, fancier and in some cases more dreadful display — finally hit US shelves this month. For those that picked one of these up and have spent some quality time digging into the latest firmware, how are you liking things? Particularly for those that upgraded, are you pleased with the new build? Are you being plagued with those mysterious screen problems features? Could you stand to see a few more things tweaked for the PSP-4000? We suspect there will be quite a few mixed messages flying in this one, so let’s get those comments rolling.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Ask Engadget, Wireless, Networking

The latest question to fly into our Ask Engadget mailbox (which is ask at engadget dawt com, for those unaware) concerns wireless routers. But not just any wireless router. We’re talking wireless routers that offer up rock solid reliability day after day, transfer after transfer.

“What is the best wireless router in terms of reliability? I know that question has been covered before, but most people just answer with whatever router they own. I’ve had issues with routers. Gone through three Netgears and a Linksys that after a certain amount of time cease to hold a decent connection. I’m wondering if people know of a solid router that might be a little less mainstream.”

Who better to ask about the underground WiFi router scene than Engadget readers, right? Help this poor fellow out — one more dropped connection whilst racking up frags and he’s going to have a catastrophic meltdown.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We got to play around with a SMART Table in a classroom full of lucky kids at Haines Elementary School in Chicago this morning, and we came away impressed with how much they loved it. The multitouch table is built on the same basic idea and hardware as Microsoft Surface — Vista PC, XGA projector, infrared camera — but it’s a custom patented SMART design, not Surface lite or anything like that. That said, the multitouch system isn’t quite as responsive as Surface, and the kid-proof plastic screen felt a little weird, but it certainly works well enough — the Table recognizes up to 40 touches (enough for six kids to play comfortably, we were told) and we saw some interesting demos, ranging from the standard rotate / zoom photo app to painting and puzzle games. Teachers get admin access with a special USB key that enables them to manage apps, and there’s an SDK in the works, so hopefully there’ll be quite a few to manage. SMART says the Table should start shipping next spring for somewhere between $7,000 to $8,000 each — obviously the company will be targeting school systems with its extensive SMART Board sales network, but well-off parents will be able to score one for their hopelessly spoiled darling children as well. Check a few vids of the table in action after the break.

Continue reading Kids-on with the SMART Table

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Original post by Nilay Patel