Engadget: Over the last several months complaints that Panasonic’s plasma HDTVs experience sudden adverse changes in their black levels after a certain number of viewing hours have been piling up in an AVSForum thread, and now that behavior has been confirmed, though not very well explained, in a response the company sent to CNET today:
“In order to achieve the optimal picture performance throughout the life of the set, Panasonic Viera plasma HDTVs incorporate an automatic control which adjusts an internal driving voltage at predetermined intervals of operational hours.

As a result of this automatic voltage adjustment, background brightness will increase from its initial value … The newest Viera plasma HDTVs incorporate an improved automatic control which applies the voltage adjustments in smaller increments. This results in a more gradual change in the Black Level over time.
Especially considering many buyers purchased their televisions specifically for those deep black levels, you can see why a TV suddenly going Sammy Sosa overnight would be upsetting.

One of the reigning theories in the thread indicated by poster & calibrator D-Nice has been that this is by design, but a flaw in the settings caused the large jumps (around double the brightness, as measured by several owners light meters) instead of a much more subtle change. So what now for owners or potential buyers?

Without more details about what is going on and whether or not anything can be done about it, like CNET’s David Katzmeier, it’s hard to see how we can continue to recommend these HDTVs for purchase without knowing what they will do months or years down the line.

The ball is in Panasonic’s court now, a speedy response could do a lot to assuage the concerns of current and potential owners.

panasonic plasma

BBC: One million people downloaded Nokia’s free navigation software during the first week of its launch, the company claims.

Ovi Maps have been downloaded 1.4m times overall since the application became available on January 21 2010.

It has been most popular in China, Italy, the UK, Germany and Spain. The service provides different direction information for drivers and pedestrians in 74 countries and 46 different languages.

“We’re averaging a download a second, 24 hours a day,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive vice president. He added that the demand for location-based software was growing more quickly than the company had anticipated.

Research by Strategy Analytics suggests that Nokia has 39% of the global smartphone market. Both Nokia and Google now offer free-to-download navigation services, which is putting pressure on the sat-nav industry.

Dutch satellite company Nav4All announced that it is shutting down after its contract with Nokia subsidiary Navteq, a digital mapping company, was not renewed.

nokia Ovi

Engadget: The year’s 2010, yet we’re still leering at the dusty pile of cables behind our AV equipment and wondering, “O UWB, where art thou?”

Well, the folks at Tech-On have got a little update for us: Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba are reported to be delivering products donning 60GHz wireless chips — which sip little juice but churn out 7GHz of colossal bandwidth and 1.5Gbps of data rate — in the second half of this year.

While none of the manufacturers are directly pimping either WirelessHD or WiGig, it appears that Hitachi and Panasonic are siding with WiGig’s extra functionalities like media access control (MAC), and the latter even envisions “embedding the functionality into portable gear” for downloading digital content from kiosks.

Either way, it’s nice to see some progress here — we don’t want things to drag on any longer, do we?

hitachi panasonic Toshiba

CNet: Steve Jobs apparently laid into Google recently for entering the phone market with the Nexus One and attempting to steal the iPhone’s thunder.

As we write, the Jobsinator is setting his spleen to its maximum vent setting, because Google may be planning to release a Chrome OS-based tablet PC to take on the newly birthed iPad.

Glen Murphy, one of Google’s Chrome OS designers, has posted a concept video (below) of what a Chrome OS interface might look like on a tablet, while documents on the Chromium Projects Web site suggest such a tablet would be between 5 and 10 inches in size, support multi-touch (like the iPad), and use a tabs-based system, rather than windows.

Rumours have also been circulating for a goodly while that Google has been in talks with HTC to build a tablet PC. Check out the video below, and click ‘Continue’ to see more mock-ups of what the Gpad may look like.

Could Google’s efforts put the willies up Jobs? Will Google prove too tardy if it does decide to crash the latest tablet party? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Apple google ipad

Electronista: Shin Jong-kyun, head of Samsung’s mobile division, announced the company’s goal to ship more than 18 million smartphones this year.

Recognizing the shift away from hardware features, Samsung will change the way its smartphones are marketed by emphasizing content, applications, and services.

The company is the world’s second largest cellphone manufacturer with about 20 percent of the market but has only about 3 percent of the smartphone market, a deficit the executive feels Samsung needs to address.

The company’s goal of shipping a total of between 260 and 270 million phones this year would represent an increase in shipments of more than 14 percent from 2009 and require faster growth than the overall market.

Samsung actually increased its share of the overall cellphone market last year. The company’s dominant position has not carried over to the smartphone market, losing ground to newer offerings from Apple, Blackberry and Android-based devices.

Its launch of its Bada open development platform for smartphones late last year was partly ignored by handset vendors and developers, though the open OS is intended primarily for Samsung’s own devices.

Samsung

BBC: Sky is kicking off the UK’s first 3D channel with a live Premier League football match to be broadcast in nine pubs around the UK this weekend.

The match between Arsenal and Manchester United will be viewable in 3D in pubs in London, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh.

In April Sky will roll out its 3D channel to hundreds of other pubs. Later in the year, Sky 3D will be made available to all Sky+HD customers with a range of content on offer. This will include movies, sport, documentaries and entertainment. Sky 3D will initially be available as a free add-on for those with Sky+HD boxes. Viewers need to wear a special pair of glasses to watch the content.

There has been a great deal of hype around the technology since cinemas began showing films in 3D. Avatar, shot in 3D, has become the highest grossing film of all time. It is expected that 3D-ready TVs will hit the consumer market later this year.

“People have already embraced 3D cinema and because Sky’s 3D service uses the same kind of technology, we’re confident there will be demand for sport, movies, concerts and drama in 3D,” said Gerry O’Sullivan, Sky’s director of strategic product development. In February, two rugby matches in the Six Nations championship will be filmed in 3D and shown at cinemas around the UK.

The 2010 World Cup will also be filmed in the format. The BBC was the first to show a 3D sports event, broadcasting a Scotland v England rugby match at the Six Nations championship in 2008.

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