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Engadget: Dizamn, chalk this up to buyouts we didn’t see coming; reports are starting to hit the wires that Matushita (aka Panasonic), which owns the controlling share (52.4%) of Victor Company of Japan (aka JVC) is apparently considering selling the unit to Kenwood. Although talks have supposedly been ongoing since earlier this month, Matsushita is apparently refusing to comment. Naw, probably won’t affect you and your general buying habits — it’s not like JVC would be going to D&M to be dismantled for its IP — we just thought you might like to know.

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EETimes: No surface-condition electron-emitter display (SED) TVs will be exhibited at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007, prompting speculation that the technology’s commercial debut could be pushed back from the current target—the fourth quarter of next year. The reasons for SED’s no show at CES are vague, but speculation is that it may be related to a patent dispute with a Texas company.

Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. distributed a memo to notify of the cancellation of a planned exhibition of its 55-inch SED prototype at next month’s CES in Las Vegas. Canon Inc., Toshiba’s partner in the development of SED, has no plans to exhibit SED panels at CES either, according to a company spokesman.
Canon and Toshiba Corp. have been promoting SED as a potential next-generation display technology, including demonstrations at past shows such as CES and Ceatec Japan. SED is said to offer the potential for a better picture than LCD or plasma displays.

Toshiba America’s memo provided vague details about the reason for exhibition cancellation, saying it was not related to technical nor business issues.

Speculation is that Toshiba cancelled the exhibition due to the unsuccessful settlement of a dispute with Nano-Proprietary Inc., which owns field-emission display (FED)-related patents. SED display makes use of field emission phenomena.

Nano-Proprietary (Austin, Texas), filed an April 2005 suit against Canon in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, claiming that the licensing agreement between the two companies does not allow Canon to transfer the licensed technology to SED Inc., the joint venture company founded by Canon and Toshiba to manufacture SED panels.

Nano-Proprietary licensed its FED-related technology to Canon in 1999. The licensing agreement granted Canon’s subsidiaries authority to use the technology. But Nano-Proprietary claimed that the SED joint venture does not fall into the category of a Canon subsidiary.

Canon claimed that SED Inc. was its subsidiary because it owned one more share of common stock in the joint venture than Toshiba. But Nano-Proprietary argued that Canon and Toshiba agreed to run the joint venture on a consensus basis, which excludes it from being defined as a subsidiary of Canon.

As a countermeasure to Nano-Proprietary’s suit, Canon made a motion seeking a judgment of no existence of a legal material fact. But U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks in November 2005 denied Canon’s motion.

Spokesmen from both Canon and Toshiba spokesmen declined to comment on the case as the issue is pending in court, but said that their plan to release SED TVs in the forth quarter of next year has not been changed.

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Electronista: Sony (…) unveiled a successor to its GT500 in-car CD receivers. Dubbed the GT610, the head unit is the first in the GT line to include a USB port.

The extension allows drivers to play AAC, MP3, or WMA tracks directly from an external flash or hard disk drive instead of recordable CDs. Audio quality for these heavily compressed music formats has also seen a boost, Sony says.

Much as with the Crystalizer hardware in Creative’s Xmod and other X-Fi devices, Sony’s BBE-MP processing can automatically find and restore the higher-frequency sounds that are typically lost when an MP3 is created. The company has also expanded the central LCD screen.

The GT610 is initially set to appear in Europe in January for an unspecified price and should also see an official launch in North America soon afterwards.

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AV zombie: According to new figures released by DisplaySearch, worldwide LCD shipments hit a record high over the third quarter of 2006. 34.6 million screens were shipped globally, growing the market by 21.9 percent year on year.

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Crave: Toshiba’s long awaited SED TV will not be appearing at the Consumer Electronics Show after all.SED TV, which stands for surface conduction electron emission display, will provide a better picture than LCD or plasma TVs, say Toshiba and its partner Canon. Toshiba also claims that they have managed to cut the manufacturing costs so that the TVs won’t cost much more than similarly sized LCDs or plasmas.

Toshiba was going to show off a 55-inch SED TV at CES in January, but then sent a note out on Friday saying they won’t be doing that after all. A Toshiba spokeswoman declined to explain the reason for the cancellation but a note sent to people with appointments to see the SED TV at CES said it wasn’t due to technical issues. The cancellation may be the result of an ongoing lawsuit over SED between Nano Proprietary and Canon, said a source close to Nano Proprietary.

The two companies have shown off various SED prototypes at CES, Ceatec, a large Japanese trade show, and other conferences. This picture comes from Ceatec in October. The company showed off the 55-inch TV, which is similar to the one that will hit shelves, for the first time in October at Ceatec. At most of these shows, the SED exhibit attracts large crowds.

The TVs have been stung by a series of delays. Toshiba and Canon started working together on SED in 1999 and said that the first TVs would hit retail shelves in 2005. In October, Toshiba pushed out the release again, and said the first SED TVs, a 55-inch TV, would come out in late 2007.

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NYTimes: Even before its release last month, Nintendo’s latest video game console, the Wii, was getting a lot of attention for its wireless motion-sensitive controllers. Swing the controller and — crack! — hit a virtual home run in a virtual ballpark, for example.

One controller is shaped like a sleek television remote (sometimes called the Wii-mote); the other plugs into the remote with a short wire, creating a vague resemblance to the two-handled martial-arts weapon it is named for, the nunchuk.

And beneath the controllers’ white plastic shells are an array of time-tested digital technologies working together in new ways.

The controllers communicate with the Wii console, a $250 box no larger than a child’s lunchbox, with the wireless technology known as Bluetooth. It is the means commonly used to link cellphones with their wireless headsets. The Wii remote also uses infrared, the same technology that links television sets with their remote controllers, to track where the controller is pointed.

In this case, a sort of crude camera — an image sensor — in the forward tip of the remote (the primary controller) detects tiny light-emitting diodes in a “sensor bar” that must be set on or very near a television plugged into the Wii. This system helps players use the remote to point accurately at specific things on the screen, like the virtual buttons to begin or end a game, or aim a weapon in a game.

Actions like pressing the buttons on screen or firing a weapon are conveyed between Bluetooth chips in the remote and in the console. The remote also contains a rumble pack, a component that vibrates to varying intensities based on information the console draws from the game’s programming and then passes to the controller.

But the controller’s most-talked-about feature is the capacity to track its own relative motion. This enables players to do things like steer a car by twisting the remote in the air or moving a game character by tilting the remote down or up.

“This represents a fabulous example of the consumerization of MEMS,” the tiny devices known as micro-electro-mechanical systems, said Benedetto Vigna, general manager of the MEMS unit at STMicroelectronics, a leading maker of the accelerometers embedded in the controllers. (Nintendo itself declined to talk about the controllers’ inner workings.)

He said the motion sensors, using the technology that activates vehicle air bags, can accurately sense three axes of acceleration: up and down, left to right, and forward and backward.

This is mostly achieved within the MEMS, micron-size machines that depend on submicroscopic structures carved into the silicon. For example, one structure moves like a tiny diving board, stimulated by the actions of the game players.

The structures are enveloped in an electrical field, Mr. Vigna said. When the MEMS elements are moved, the electrical field changes and the MEMS chip is sensitive enough to detect the changes.

These accelerometers are so sensitive, Mr. Vigna said, because electrons — those subatomic particles that whirl around the nucleus of atoms like a video game in the making — can sense the subtle atomic-level movement of the silicon structures.

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DVguru: In a report released by Nielsen Media Research, more households now own more DVD players than VCRs. DVD ownership rose 6.1% from a year ago translating to 81.2% of American households that own at least one DVD player. Consequently, VCR ownership dropped 4.5% since last year to 79.2%. It’s official, you can now stop dubbing VHS tapes to give to people.

DVD ownership has been tracked since 1999 when only 6.7% of households owned a DVD player. That means it should be 2013 before we have a clear HD optical format winner and by then it won’t even matter.

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Anythingbutipod: Forget user generated website content; Meizu is tapping in to the collective conscious of the interwebs for their next MP3 player. The guys who brought us the M6 miniplayer are holding a contest to design an MP3 player and there are prizes involved. While it would be nice to snag some royalties off of each next gen Meizu player you designed, you will have to settle for one of three M6 miniplayers.It is nice to see a company reach out to the online community for some ideas. Cheap R&D and some PR to boot, how can you loose? Other companies may want to follow suit.

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BBC: Almost three out of four UK households now watch digital television, according to media watchdog Ofcom.

Quarterly figures show that 73.3% of households watch digital services on their main TV set, a rise by around 800,000 over the last three months. Around 18.5 million have digital TV installed, with increasing numbers watching on second or third sets.

The figures also show that 9.3 million households now have digital terrestrial television, such as Freeview. More households (7 million) watch digital terrestrial TV than traditional analogue TV (6.4 million) on their main set, according to Ofcom’s report.

Between late 2007 and 2012, the analogue TV signal will be switched off in the UK.

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Slashgear: Before you even get to put your HDMI connectors to good use, you may be kissing them goodbye and saying hello to wireless HD. An Israeli company called Amimon has developed a wireless HD modem (W-HDI) that can send uncompressed 720p or 1080i video through walls and over distances of up to 40 feet.

The folks at PC Magazine saw a live demo of the system and could see no difference in picture quality between the wireless HD setup and the standard HDMI cable setup.

Amimon’s W-HDI is slated for a late 2007 release, at which time it will be able to support 3Gb/s throughputs—sufficient to drive a 1080p display. And we’ll be sure to see it at the upcoming CES in January to fill you in on more info. So, get ready to untether your plasma TV and let it hang free in all its glory.

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T3: Hooray! Toshiba’s cranked out a HD-DVD for less than half the price of the Blu-Ray competition. Hi-Def loveliness has never been so attainable. There’s really no excuse for watching DVDs in dowdy-vision any more, thanks to Toshiba’s affordable HD-DVD player, a snip at £450 (670 euro)!

Despite the budget price, Tosh’s first Hi-Def disc-spinner is no bargain basement job, it packs a feast of features, from picture-in-picture to built-in network connectivity, both of which are lacking from the Blu-Ray playing competition.

The HD-E1 is out now, and there are already 40 films on HD-DVD to sling its way. What’s more, another 60 flicks will hit stores in the first three months of 2007.

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Navigadget: Snooper Syrius is a GPS navigation system loaded with an extensive database of speed cameras around the UK and Europe. The database is called the Enigma database and is claimes to incorporate camera locations across Europe, from Manchester to Monaco.

Syrius offers even more unique features by using Snooper´s camera location technology. Unlike other portable navigators, Syrius provides full, clear alerts, confirming the speed camera type, the speed limit at the point of the alert and counts down accurately to the hazard.

The alert system on the Snooper Syrius is also somewhat considerate and smart. If you are already under the speed limit while approaching a speed camera it will only warn visually, but if you are over, it will also warn with sound. If you are in a 30mph zone you’ll get this warning 200 meters before, and 500 meters if in a 70mph zone.

The Snooper Syrius has a 4 inch touch screen and a built-in rechargeable battery and it can provide you with turn by turn instructions to your destination with helpful voice prompts and a colourful, moving 3D map (with clouds!). Syrius uses maps provided by Navteq and measures 140 x 90 x 20 mm.

The price ranges between £280 – £390 (415 – 580 euro)

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