06
Dec
2006
AV zombie: In Korea, Samsung has introduced a portable LCD TV with a 10-inch widescreen TV, able to receive the country’s terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) service. The LMD-10A51W (pictured below), which is intended for kitchens and bedrooms, sells for 390,000 won (about 320 euro), is just 4cm deep and has a battery life of two hours. The unit will also play MP3 music files and display digital images.
06
Dec
2006
Reuters: Dutch Philips Electronics has shelved plans to make mobile personal navigation systems, the chief executive of Philips’ consumer electronics unit said on Tuesday. (…)
Rudy Provoost of Philips told analysts at a meeting that Europe’s biggest consumer electronics producer would not enter the market for navigation devices, citing existing competition and the low profitability of introducing a new product in a saturated market.
Philips had said in June that it was planning to make its own navigation devices, which would weigh 160 grams and be 2 centimeters thick.
The announcement weighed on shares of TomTom at the time.
05
Dec
2006
Business 2.0: HD DVD is getting more love online according to Cymfony, a firm that measures online social media buzz.
The company issued a report yesterday that delivers some bad news to Sony and the other backers of the Blu-ray disc format for next-generation DVDs.
The report, titled “A Blue Christmas for Blu-ray,” includes the following points:
Cymfony said it selected 2,000 posts to analyze the online discussion of the next-gen formats.
05
Dec
2006
Engadget: While LoJack and SkyHook tracking for laptops already exists, there’s a new competitor roaming around the United Kingdom.
C.A.T.S.eye (Covert Asset Tracking System), currently being tested by British police, is a tiny chip that will emit a tracking signal (via GPS, GSM, and radio) should your laptop get stolen. Police can then use the signal to track your laptop online, as you might expect. Now, according to the company’s site, use of the device reduced “theft from vehicle” (seriously though, you’re still gonna leave your laptop in your car?) incidents by 14 percent in a month, but that’s a figure that we don’t really put a whole lot of faith in, without knowing the specifics of the test.
Still, if you want to try it out, you can sign up to be a beta tester by purchasing a unit for 225 quid (about 330 euro) — but we don’t know how wise it is to leave your laptop out to get stolen in the name of research, so maybe you’ll just want to surreptitiously monitor your friend or something.
05
Dec
2006
Mobilewhack: LG Korea has gone a step further with the party gimmicks by introducing their latest breathalizer phone, the LG LP4100 which has a built-in breathalizer capabilities that records your blood-alcohol level. When blown into by an intoxicated partier, it will gives a warning and displays a nifty little animation of a car swerving on a road and crashing into traffic cones.
I guess this type of animation won’t really wake them up. The good thing is it also features a Drunk Dial Preventer. It can be programmed to block selected numbers in the address book (bosses, moms, exes, pizzerias) if breath analyzer records a blood-alcohol concentration over 0.08. It’s already a hit in Korea, where more than 200,000 of LG’s Breathalyzer-type phones have been sold.
05
Dec
2006
AV zombie: According to the latest data from market research company DisplaySearch, Samsung is selling more flatscreens and earning more revenue than any other LCD TV or plasma manufacturer.
It reports that the Korean giant’s worldwide market share is currently 11.2 percent. LG rates a strong second with 9.9 percent. Thomson earnes third place with 9.8 percent; Philips fourth (6.3 percent) and Sony fifth ( 5.7 percent). In the revenue chart, Samsung holds 15.2 percent of overall global TV revenues, while Sony moves up to second position with 10.3 percent.
05
Dec
2006
Yahoo: Veteran audio engineer Tony Bongiovi, who once worked with Jimi Hendrix, has been disappointed for decades that the equipment most people used to listen to music couldn’t replicate the high-quality sound heard in the studio. Now, he thinks he’s created an answer: a technique for sound processing that’s making its debut in a JVC car stereo this week.
“Speakers are such a primitive device, but with digital technology we can overcome that,” Bongiovi said. (…)
The technique, which Bongiovi calls the Digital Power Station for the studio he once built in a converted power station in Manhattan, can be described as a very sophisticated equalizer. It adapts intelligently to the music to give even cheap speakers a full, robust sound and compensate for the deficiencies of the listening space.
This is accomplished by digital signal processing, a technology found in virtually all consumer audio products. But according to Bongiovi, it has never been employed in this way.
04
Dec
2006
About: Panasonic, who sells the most Plasma Televisions in the U.S., has come out with an aggressive advertising campaign promoting Plasma over LCD. However, does their advertising campaign tell the whole story? For a look at Panasonic’s Plasma talking points, check out Panasonic’s Six Facts You Need To Know Before Buying a Flat Panel Television.
04
Dec
2006
Brighthand: Garmin has discontinued its last two Windows Mobile-based devices, leaving it with just a single GPS-enabled handheld, the Palm OS-based iQue 3000.After gradually building up a fairly large portfolio of models since 2003, the company has been whittling away at its line-up of handhelds in the last few months.
Most recently, the iQue M3 and iQue M4 were added to Garmin’s list of discontinued devices, which means it no longer offers any Pocket PCs.
04
Dec
2006
T3: Mobiado’s first 3G mobile is its best yet: the Luminoso is also its highest specced luxury phone to date, packing cool blue keypad lights which illuminate the case like the interior of a swanky bar. Using this blower at night is like holding a beacon of hipness.
It’s like they’ve married the style of an Aston martin with the practicality of a Volkswagen. We want one!
04
Dec
2006
Newlaunches: If the i600 made messaging easier here is the Samsung Ultra Video F500 straight from Hong Kong. It is the first phone to support DivX codec along with support for MPEG-4, H.264, WMV and AVI files thus covering all major video formats. Videos are bought to life on the crisp 2.4 inch screen, you can also shoot images and take videos via the 2 Megapixel camera. The Ultra Video has a smart design to go with its cutting-edge features it’s got dual faces – one side is a phone while the other contains a large screen and intuitive controls for multimedia. It has a unique swivel design for multimedia content. The screen swivels away from the controls to adjust the viewing angle or form a stand to place the device down. The F500 has 400 MB of internal memory and has a Micro SD card slot which can swallow a 2 GB card which is good for 4 hours of video.
Pricing and availability of the Samsung Ultra Video F500 is not known yet.
04
Dec
2006
AV zombie: Nintendo unleashed 400,000 Wii consoles in Japan, for its December 2 launch, and the console sold out within hours. Putting out more than four times the number of PS3s currently in circulation will rocket it to the top of the next gen games market in its home territory.
Long lines formed outside retail stores, with some people standing line since Friday. More than 2000 waited outside the Yurakucho branch of Bic Camera in Tokyo.
In addition, Nintendo plans to ship 1.5 million DS units during the month of December, confirming the handheld’s status as the number one portable games unit.