About Electronics

Dowjones Business News: Sony announced today that it will invest ¥11billion to build a plant in Slovakia for production of LCD TVs.  The move follows a trend of LCD and plasma makers, including Toshiba and Samsung, for producing screens in Eastern Europe.

Sony’s new plant is likely to begin operation in September 2007, and will have an annual production output of around 3 million LCD TVs under the ‘Bravia’ brand name.

Sony already has a TV-making plant in Slovakia, where it manufactures CRT TVs and LCD TVs of 32 inches or smaller.  The company said that it will close that plant when the new factory becomes operational.

In Europe, Sony has another LCD TV plant in Span.

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Ubergizmo: Yamaha has introduced a new flat panel surround sound system that boasts 40 individually-amped drivers.

The YSP-1100 Digital Sound Projector utilises Yamaha’s very own CINEMA DSP technology which is compatible with the Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Pro Logic II, and DTS Neo:6 sound formats.

There are 5 different sound settings: 5-Beam Mode, Stereo Mode, 3-Beam Mode, Stereo+3-Beam Mode and My Beam Mode for your listening pleasure.

The YSP-1100 will retail for $1,699.95 (around €1,340).

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Dow Jones Newswire: Matsushita, maker of Panasonic-brand products, has said it will start marketing Blu-ray disc recorders in Japan this November.

The brand will launch two Blu-ray recorder models with different hard disk drive capacities and plans a monthly output of 3,000 for each model.

The recorders will come with a high price tag, but Takuya Sugita, Matsushita’s video equipment business director, said in a news conference their price should come down as sales grow. The company expects retailers to sell the high-end model for around Y300,000 (approximately €2,000).

The move will make them one of the first companies to launch the Blu-ray recorders, as the battle over the next-generation video standard heats up.

Matsushita has already released a Blu-ray player, but it has yet to finalize plans for selling recorders outside of Japan, Sugita said.

Electronics companies have basically divided into two camps. Sony, Samsung, Philips, Pioneer and Sharp also support the Blu-ray standard, while a group led by Toshiba is pushing the rival HD-DVD.

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EasyBourse: According to an executive at Sharp, the company will be releasing their Blu-ray player into Japan and European markets early in the new year.

“We haven’t decided on the date yet, but we want to release them as early as possible,” said Mikio Katayama, senior executive director of Sharp.

The move by the Osaka-based electronics manufacturer, which is known for its Aquos LCD TVs, may give the Blu-Ray camp additional support in the competition to establish the next-generation DVD format standard.

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BBC: 3D television could be in homes within three years, according to a European research consortium.
Levent Onural, co-ordinator of the multinational 3DTV network, said the technology was already in place for 3D TV and cinema to become commonplace.
The consortium, funded by the European Commission, consists of about 200 researchers in seven countries, and is halfway through its four-year duration.
However, Prof Onural said holographic television was at least 10 years away. He said: “We do think holographic 3D TV is feasible, but the technology is not in place yet. If you ask my opinion, it will take another 10 years to get there, but some say it will take 14 to 20 years.”

However, he said that it would offer the “ultimate viewing experience”. “For example, take a football game. Viewers would be able to look at a TV that will be like a coffee table and see small-scale real football players made up from light running around on that table.”

See also: 3D HDTV from Philips.

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AVZombie: Owners of HDTV sets watch more TV as a result of their purchase. That’s the finding of a new study commissioned by DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group. Figures reveal that 97 percent of HDTV owners are satisfied with their TVs and 59 percent are watching more TV as a result.
Despite this satisfaction, only 11 percent of owners thought that they had connected equipment via HDMI and 28 percent were not really sure at all how their TV was hooked up.

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BBC: A video projector that is the size of a sugar cube has been created by researchers. The miniature device could be used to project images from mobile phones, PDAs or laptops, according to the team.

It was created by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.

Traditional projectors use arrays of millions of mirrors to display footage, but this petite prototype comprises a single tiny mirror.

The width of projector measures less than 16mm; its height and depth is 9mm. (…) Presently the projector can only work with red and blue lasers, meaning any displays have a limited colour range. (…)

Dr Peter Schreiber, of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena, said: “I think there are a lot of useful applications for such as device. “First of all, it is very tiny, so it could be used as a projector for a mobile phone, a projector for a laptop.”
He added that unlike standard imaging devices, the device can project images onto curved surfaces, such as a dome, which could give it some niche applications.

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Techcrunch: RSS vendor Newsgator will announce a new service for reading RSS feeds on Windows Mobile phones. Called Newsgator Go! the program will cost about $30 (24 euro) and will sync its data with other members of the Newsgator family: NetNewsWire for Mac, FeedDemon for PCs, Newsgator Online and Newsgator Inbox for Outlook.

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Akihabara News: Pioneer has launched a new 60-inch plasma TV – the PDP-607HX.

According to their European website, it will hit the mainland in January 2007 under the name PDP-607XD.

Their 60-inch has a native resolution of 1365×768 and can accept a  1920x1080p/24Hz signal.  Finishing off their 7th Generation line-up of 42 and 50-inch Plasma TVs, it has an integrated DVB-T tuner, 2 HDMI inputs and a PC input.

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EETimes: Apple Computer Inc.’s recent iPod introductions were a disappointment, which, in turn, will impact the overall demand for the NAND flash-memory market in the fourth quarter of 2006, according to a report from Gartner Inc.Last week, Apple rolled out new versions of its iPod MP3 line, but Gartner believes that the products were “evolutionary” and “did not redefine the portable media player category.”

“Instead, Apple focused on growing its margins for its shuffle and nano lineup and decided it is not necessary to have the most aggressive pricing at this time,” according to Gartner. “Unfortunately for NAND flash vendors, Apple could have made a much greater impact with its long-awaited refresh of its flash-based music players, through more aggressive pricing and capabilities, but perhaps it chose not to.”

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CNN: Kids aiming to persuade their parents to buy the PlayStation 3 have some new ammunition – donating their PS3′s down time to researchers could help cure Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or mad cow disease. (…)
The PS3 uses a powerful new processor called the Cell Broadband Engine to run highly realistic games like “Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07,” “Metal Gear Solid 4″ and “Full Auto 2.” It also has a 20GB or 60GB hard drive (depending on the model) and can connect to the Internet either wirelessly, or with an Ethernet hookup so gamers can download new programs and take each other on. (…)
“It has so much horsepower and, of course, when you’re playing a game all that horsepower will be used for the game. But there are a lot of times during the day when somebody’s not playing the game,” said Sony’s Richard Marks. “It seemed like a good idea to be able to use that horsepower for something else that is, in this case, good for mankind.”

Sony worked with Stanford University’s Folding@home project to harness the PS3′s technology to help study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly.

(to read the full article, please click here)

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Akihabara News: Denon has a new 7.1 channel AV amplifier – the AVC-1930.

It uses the SHARC 32bit DSP, and has 2 HDMI outputs and one input. The amplifier supports 1080p and is compatible with the ASD-1R control station for iPod.

It also has the Room EQ to automatically tune itself for optimum sound experience.

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