Displays – Page 8 – Digital-Lifestyles

The Text-Message Enabled Chandelier

The beautiful Swarovski SMS-enabled chandelier Swarovksi, an Austrian crystal group famed for their chandeliers (where else do you get yours anyway?) have demonstrated a chandelier that displays text messages sent to it from mobile phones.

The chandelier, called “Lolita” (oh no – that’s going to do strange things to the search engines) uses strings of LEDs hung in crystal cylinders. The rows of LEDs are then switched on and off in sequence to create a scrolling dot-matrix effect – rather like an extraordinarily posh and expensive version of those displays you get in cab office windows.

Swarovski

BenQ Launch World’s First 12” High Definition Widescreen Laptop

BenQ are pitching their new Joybook 6000 as part of their “digital hub” – and is the World’s first high definition 12.1” laptop.

The high definition screen runs at a 1280 x 600 resolution (WXGA) – we haven’t seen it yet, but it is by all accounts beautiful. We’ve been looking around and it seems to retail at about US$2640.

The Centrino notebook has the usual WiFi/Bluetooth/IrDA capabilities, so will be able to connect users to data services easily and under a variety of conditions.

Joybook Home – Middle East

The Line between TVs and Displays Blurs Even Further

Is it a display with a TV tuner or is it a TV that you can use as a flat panel monitor? The viewing angle is possibly a bit narrow for living room use, but Iiyama’s new E430T-S display could easily be used as a television when you’re not using it to read DigitalLifestyles. Suspiciously similar to their existing E430T-S but with a PAL/SECAM/NTSC tuner in it, Iiyama are making the leap to multifunction displays as the market grows: flat panels have become enormously popular over the past 18 months, make ideal mid-size television displays, use less power and save space. Home users no longer see the point in having two near-identical pieces of equipment that do the same thing, and the benefits of integrating an tuner into an existing production model are enormous compared to the tiny cost.

The new display even has built-in speakers, but at 1.5w, you’ll definitely need to use something a bit more powerful for watching TV in living room.

Iiyama

New Sony Products Shown at Open House

Sony’s Open House event this year covered all the key consumer devices – from HDTV recorders, and new Handycams to extremely desirable PDAs with more bells and whistles than a bus load of Morris dancers crashing into a flute factory.

Sony are going for integration even more than usual – HDTVs have integrated card readers for cable users, Clié PDAs and VAIO notebooks feature even sharper cameras and better wireless access than before, and MP3 support filters into products where there was previously only ATRAC.

More details from DVD Format

Thomson Announce Portable Multimedia Player

Giant media group, Thomson, has announced the launch of a portable multimedia player that has 20Gb of hard drive storage and a built in colour screen which plays videos, show photographs and plays music. Sold in two guises, Europe (THOMSON LYRA Audio/Video Jukebox PDP 2860 – €749, ~£520) and USA (RCA RD2780 – $499.99), it will play back both MPEG-1 & MPEG-4 video and mp3, Windows Media Audio. It can also be upgraded to mp3PRO.

Depending on the compression used, Thomson claim the unit can hold up to eighty hours of video, which can either be played on its own screen (3.5-inch Thin Film Transistor (TFT) LCD ) or displayed on a television set using analog composite leads. Alternatively the unit can either be used as portable computer storage, store up to 5,000 music tracks or 100,000 JPEG images. Images can be organized into slideshows to accompany the playback of music.

The content can either loaded via a computer (PC or Mac), using a USB 2.0 connection, or the unit can either record video; using it built in MPEG-4 encoder, and audio directly. When the unit encodes video content, forty hours of content can be stored.

Battery life is reported to last up to twelve hours when playing music but only four when playing back video.

The unit is pretty compact (5.31″ x 3.15″ x 1.06″, 13.5cm x 8.00cm x 2.70cm) and light (10.5 ounces, under 300g) and we suspect will seduce many enough to add it to their xmas list.

RCA RD2780

NEC DLP Projector Sits 2.5″ from Screen

Video projectors are great for showing large, high quality video images, but they have a few problems. They normally have to be placed a significant distance from the screen they are being projected on to, to ensure the projected image is large enough; and, because the light is projected a long distance to the screen, walking between the projector and the screen blocks the projected image. This normally leads to the projector being mounted to the ceiling to try and minimise the impact of these disadvantages.

A while back NEC took note of these and produced a DLP (Digital Light Processor) projector that takes a different approach. The WT600 is a short-throw projector that, unlike other projectors, uses four aspheric (convex) mirrors. This means it can be placed as close as 2.5 inches from its screen, and still produce a 40″ image. Placing it 26″ away results in a 100″ image. It can be placed in front of or behind the screen, on the floor or the ceiling and can run as quietly as <32dB. This week they've installed a number of them for an exhibition called Ecce Homology at the Fowler Museum at UCLA as, due to the restricted space available and the need for the viewers to interact with the projected graphics, no other projector could fit the bill. A really interesting feature is provided by some of the software, called ImageExpress, that ships with it and other projectors in the NEC range. It enables a number of computers/laptops to switch between projecting what is displayed on their screens on to the projected screen, either using an Ethernet cable or wirelessly using 802.11b. Great news when a number people bring content to a meeting that they want to share with everyone, such as a group friend showing holiday photos. The 13-lb., 1500 ANSI lumen, XGA resolution DLP projector currently retailing for just under $7,000 (~£4,150), placing it in the same price range as plasma displays. NEC WT600 specification

Ecce Homology at the Fowler Museum at UCLA

Microsoft Announce Partners for Portable Media Centers (nee Media2Go)

Microsoft has been talking about portable devices for a while that would enable owners to watch videos, view photos, play music, labelling them as Media2Go.

This week they have announced not only a new official name, but two companies that will help them create designs. AboCom Systems Inc and Tatung Co. will be the original design manufacturers (ODMs) of the now re-christened Portable Media Centers.

These designs will then be passed on the manufacturers, who are already lining up to get involved. So far Creative, iRiver International, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., SANYO Electric Co. Ltd. and ViewSonic Corp have thrown their hats in to the ring – others are expected to follow.

Intel has had this type of device, labelled a Personal Video Player (PVP), in development for a long time ($100 ZVUE!.

We imagine that Microsoft will hope to win the consumer, via strong integration of these devices with their operating system and the content owners, by highlighting their Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Archos Video AV320 information

Buy Archos Video AV320 at Amazon US and UK

TI Wins Emmy Award for DLP

Texas Instruments has won the Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for their Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology. The National Television Academy official title of the award is “Pioneering Development of Mass-Produced Digital Reflective Imaging Technology for Consumer Rear Projection Television.”

DLP produced very high resolution video images and is used in Digital Cinema projectors, some video projectors and a number of rear-projection TV’s (PJTV). It gives an entirely digital connection between a video source and the screen by using a optical semiconductor known as the Digital Micromirror Device (DMD). The DMD is essentially a chip with many tiny mirrors that manipulates light.

Peter O. Price, President of the National Television Academy said “The worlds of broadcasting and home entertainment are undergoing a period of significant change that is characterised by the growing choice being offered to increasingly demanding consumers, and DLP technology is playing a significant role in enabling that change to take place. We see it as a considerable innovation in the market.”

DLP – How it works

Emmy 2003 Technology & Engineering Awards

Gateway Becomes Top US Seller of Plasma TVs

Gateway Inc. has become America’s top seller of plasma screen TVs to consumers, surpassing Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and other traditional industry leaders.

Previously only known as a direct-sales PC seller, they started selling their first thin television,
a 42-inch Enhanced Definition (ED) Plasma TV, last November and by June this year they held a 28 percent market share of major consumer electronics retailers.

They plan to expand their current six thin screens offering, which range from 17 inches through to 50 inches, before the christmas season.

Billboards that Use Digital Ink

Magink have unveiled a low-power billboard in New York that uses digital ink to display a changing image.

The Magink billboard uses a paste of tiny helix-shaped particles, the orientation of which is changed by electrical fields. When the helix changes orientation, the amount of light reflected changes so they can be used to build up full colour images. Incredibly, the display can run at 70 frames per second.

With a dot pitch of 5mm, the technology isn’t yet suitable for replacing paper (or even television), but it’s an exciting step. Currently the display can handle 4096 colours and only consumes power when changing the image – like paper, it doesn’t require a backlight.

Magink