Category: Video Displays

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.

ZVUE! $100 Personal Video Player Causes a Stir

At a price point that is sure to create interest, HandHeld Entertainment are going after the Christmas “tween” market with the $100 ZVUE! Player.

Long suspected to be vapourware, until it was actually seen in an interview. The device is based around Secure Digital/MultiMedia Cards and an ultra bright 2.5 inch full-colour screen (still TFT based, not OLED). About the size of an iPod, the ZVUE! will play full motion videos, MP3s and display digital images. The media cards are being branded as ZCARDS! and will be priced from $5.99 upwards, depending on capacity and content. The player has no inbuilt user memory and needs a media card to function.

Connectivity is provided via a USB1.1 socket and it features, a rather sociable, two headphone sockets. The battery life of around eight to ten hours is provided through standard AA batteries.

Nathan Schulhof, president and chief executive officer of HandHeld Entertainment said: “The ZVUE! has the right combination of features, price and content to make it the ultimate, ‘must-have’ and ‘must-give’ device for the 2003 Holiday Season.” The device certainly sounds interesting, but we’re worried about the proprietary format – though since Schulhof is credited as the inventor of the portable MP3 player, he may just know what he’s doing.

The ZVUE only plays files encoded in the proprietary HHe format – so you won’t be able to play just any old media files on it. This system will live or die based on the quality of the content available for it.

Retail content packages are to include cartoons, music videos and extreme sports.

HandHeld Entertainment

CNet PVP Roundup

Review of six 19″ LCD screen

Review of six 19″ LCD screens, the majority of them are under 1,000 Euros. The test are particularly tough including high-res game play. The screen all use two type of screens, the MVA (Fujitsu) or PVA (the Samsung version of MVA), with both of them being 25ms response times (the average time required for a liquid crystal cell to go from active to inactive and back to active again).

They’re all (Acer L1931, Iiyama AS4821DT BK, Nec LCD1980SX, Nec LCD1920NX, Samsung SyncMaster 192B, Sony SDM-S93) judged as pretty much the same standard.

Review link

Garry Kasparov vs 3d Virtual Reality

Garry Kasparov will be playing another Man vs Computer chess match at the New York Athletic Club starting 11th November this year.

The unique twist on this match, is that using the X3D Display, the chess board will appear to be “floating in the air between man and computer” and he will use voice commands to move the virtual 3D pieces. 3D viewing has been possible for quite a while, but X3D Technologies are claiming X3D Display is viewable by the naked eye, rather than with the normal synchronised shutter glasses.

Billed as “the most dominant chess program and the most powerful 3D software to challenge the greatest chess brain of all time”, it will be Webcasted at www.X3D.com.

This event is a little different from a lot of their other sponsored entertainment content, which is headlined by Swimsuit models in 3D.

Link