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Samsung said on Thursday it has developed a way to broadcast digital television signals to car screens and to devices such as DVD, game and music players, with an aim to creating a standard for portable digital television.

The South Korean company said it is not close to developing commercial products based on the technology, but plans to demonstrate it for the first time at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week using content from Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Samsung is hoping to attract interest from U.S. broadcasters, who are expected to phase out older analog television systems with digital television by the end of 2009. It could eventually sell the technology in countries in other countries such as Canada and Mexico, Samsung spokesman John Godfrey said.

The development comes as the world’s wireless companies, including Samsung’s mobile handset division, sell more handsets that can play video.
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AV zombie: LG has thrown down the gauntlet to both rival HD disc camps and announced that it will show the world’s first combination HD DVD/Blu-ray player at the International CES next week.

The Korean brand says the dual-format high-definition disc player will be released in the United States early 2007. In a statement it adds “LG expects this technological breakthrough to end the confusion and inconvenience of competing high-definition disc formats for both content producers and consumers.” (…)

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Akihabara: Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest provider of thin-film transistor, liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panels announced today that it has created the first LCD panel that can produce independent images on each side of a mobile LCD display.

Samsung’s new double-sided LCD can show two entirely different pictures or sets of visual data simultaneously on the front and back of the same screen. Other conventional double-sided LCDs can only show a reverse image of the same video data.

This new development will replace two display panels with one, thereby reducing overall thickness of mobile products by at least 1mm.

Executive Vice President Yun Jin-hyuk, in charge of the Mobile Display Division of the Samsung Electronics LCD Business, says, “Our new double-sided mobile display underscores Samsung’s commitment to equip our customers with advanced display technology that accelerates the trend toward slimmer mobile products. We anticipate high demand when we commence mass production in the first half of 2007.”

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Guardian Unlimited: Judging by figures that came out of the US this week, the going for Sony’s console could be tougher than it had expected.This Christmas was the first time that anyone could see the three next-generation console contenders – PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii – taking each other on head to head. And in America, at least, Sony was left struggling.

According to statistics put together by US retail analyst NPD, it was Microsoft’s Xbox 360 that emerged the overall winner during the festive sales rush. The Xbox 360 – already on the market for a year and boosted by the best-selling title Gears of War – shifted 2m units across the US in November and December, narrowly ahead of the Nintendo Wii.

The Wii, revelling in a huge splash of media coverage, managed 1.8m in the same two-month period – despite not launching until the third week of November.In comparison with these two, however, the PlayStation 3 fared notably less well. Dogged by a lack of stock and higher price, the PS3 sold an estimated 750,000 units following its launch on November 17 – the same week that the Wii hit America’s streets.

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Engadget: We’ve seen some fairly interesting means of keeping track of your mischievous kids (or pets), but Sayo Isaac Daniel’s latest invention takes top honors as the ultimate paranoid parent’s must-have gizmo.

Aside from the obvious tracking uses, Daniel’s GPS footwear is actually intended to beam out a distress signal to a pre-selected recipient if the wearer hits a certain panic button. The GPS-equipped kicks would present the location of the violated victim to whoever is deemed that person’s hero, and would hopefully give the rescuer enough time to arrive and lay down the law.

Also, the patent explains an “alarm toe switch” that would be inserted within the shoe in order to give customers the ability to sound their alarm (intentionally or otherwise) without making any sudden movements. Reportedly, a company dubbed Quantum Satellite Technology plans to start selling the shoes “in March for around $350 (about 265 euro) per pair,” but the GPS signal emanating from your soles won’t do you much good if your kidnapper ditches your footwear before tossing you in the trunk.

(pic via Navigadget)

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Slashgear: Word from Gizmodo is that Jobs will hold special meetings with Telefonica’s top guy Cesar Alierta about computers and the Apple Phone product. Gizmodo claims that word first came into Gizmodo Spain, but the reliability of the source is not noted in the article. The article then goes on to claim that the meetings will take place in February or even by the end of the month, but that this also means that the phone would not have a launch at MacWorld.

(…) Also, whatever is launched at the MacWorld keynote, it’s gotta be good. Jobs’s keynote has been lengthened to 2 hours instead of the regular 1 hour. (…)

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New York Times: (…) Warner Brothers, which helped popularize the DVD more than a decade ago, plans to announce next week a single videodisc that can play films and television programs in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the rival DVD technologies.

Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner, plans to formally announce the new disc, which it is calling a Total HD disc, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Two rival camps introduced high-definition DVD players last year: a consortium called Blu-ray, backed by Sony and others, and a group called HD-DVD, backed by Toshiba and Microsoft. Retail and media executives say this clash of corporate titans and their incompatible machines has left some consumers bewildered and has slowed the introduction of what is intended to be the next great thing in home entertainment.

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Playfuls:”A hacker which goes by the name of Muslix64 claims on a forum that his “saga’ of breaking the AACS protection (considered unbreakable) only lasted 8 days..”

“The implications of this already-tested bypass-method are numerous, but perhaps the most important are linked to the HD DVD vs. Blu Ray battle. This could mean that Sony’s investment in PS3 (with the famous Blu Ray optical drive attached) will become the company’s biggest blunder, since consumers will likely prefer HD DVD instead of the Blu Ray. But that could also mean that major movie studios (who are interested in keeping their intellectual property protected) will either go towards Blu Ray (despite customers’ preferences, of course…) or they will make their products even more expensive, since money invested in new DRM mechanisms need to be recovered…”
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