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T3: Philips has claimed its new backlit LED TV offers better picture quality than its flagship Aurea II television.

The 42PFL9803 incorporates a new technology called LED LUX, which equips screens with 1152 individual LEDs making up 128 segments, each of which can be dimmed independently allowing certain parts of the display to produce bright whites and the rest to remain deep black.

The Aurea II uses conventional LCD technology, meaning that its backlight can either be switched on or off.

Up until now, Philips has claimed the Aurea II to be its ultimate TV in terms of picture quality and design.

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Electronista: Between the IFA show in Berlin and COMEX in Singapore, Creative will show off at least three new products, including the Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! portable USB sound card, the N400 speakers and EP-430 in-ear earphones.

The X-Fi Go! uses a microphone and headset port but differs from the earlier USB Play! sound card with the company’s X-Fi audio processing software and 1GB of internal storage capacity.

The company will also unveil its N400 USB-powered X-Fi speakers. With the same X-Fi sound processing integrated into the 2W RMS twin 2-inch drivers, they include media controls on their front panel.

For personal audio enjoyment, Creative will also show its EP-430 in-ear earphones, which are available in six colors.

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Crave: Sony announced a rev to its Walkman line of MP3 players in the form of the B-Series, E-Series, and S-Series.

The S-Series represents the top of the line. This new Walkman comes with the integrated noise-canceling capability found on the Sony NWZ-S710. A pair of complementing, high-end earphones are included in the package, along with an accessory cable that allows the player to be used as a standalone noise-canceling module for use with other audio devices.

Sony has also added support for WMV video, an FM tuner, and a separate podcast menu item for easier management of the content. In addition, the S Series is the first Walkman to feature a customizable interface that includes a variety of themes and the ability to set personal photos as wallpaper. Perhaps the coolest feature, however, is the SensMe Channels function, which is a “smart” DJ that uses an algorithm to analyze songs in order to create custom playlists.

The other video player in the line, the E-Series, is set to replace the NWZ-A720. This Walkman also features a two-inch color screen and WMV/Amazon Unbox support. It has a fantastic rated battery life of 45-hours for audio and 8 for video.

Last but not least is Sony’s new budget model, the B-Series. This player features a built-in USB interface for true plug-and-play capability, as well as a one-touch bass boost button, an FM tuner, and a voice recorder.

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Electronista: JVC’s newest addition to its Sophisti line-up is the NX-BD3 Blu-ray home theater system, which is the company’s first Blu-ray system and the first dedicated Blu-ray player in the industry to feature Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) compatibility via a wireless adapter update.

Thanks to DLNA support, the 2.1-channel system will be able to work with other types of DLNA-certified devices such as cellphones, PCs and others to share digital content, including MPEG videos, JPEG photos and MP3/WMA music.

The NX-BD3’s internal amplifier is rated at 4x55W, with the subwoofer delivering a further 200W of bass. The two speakers sport two drivers with different material thicknesses each, allowing them to create a virtual surround sound system with a phantom center channel and virtual rear speakers. Supported audio formats will include Dolby Digital, DTS and Dolby Pro-Logic II.

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ipodNN: Sony last week revamped its Xplod car stereo head-end units with its first truly iPod-aware models.

The GT630UI, GT430IP, GT330 and GT130 all have a USB connection that allows iPods and (for the GT630UI) iPhones to be controlled and charged through the stereo’s own interface rather than the player itself. The same support also allows other MP3 players to be recognized through the digital link.

All three also mark the introduction of a scan technology dubbed ZAPPIN that Sony says will do for digital content what auto-scanning does for radios; using the option plays samples of each track in a given piece of the listener’s library to give them a taste of songs and allow playing it by ear rather than text descriptions.

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HDTV News: According to a new report, the launch of Full HD television services will not significantly affect sales of Blu-ray discs or players.

The report titled “Full HD: Blu-ray Camp Claims Broadcasters ‘Mislead’ Consumers”, was published by the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices service.

Full HD programming has recently been introduced in the US by satellite companies DirecTV and Dish Network, and in France by cable operator Numericable.

Claims that these services provide HD pictures and sound of a quality equal to that provided by Blu-Ray discs, has been refuted by the Blu-ray Disc Association.

According to Strategy Analytics, satellite TV services are in competition with cable and IPTV services, not with the Blu-ray Disc format itself.

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ITProPortal: HTC have been remiss of late with the simpler version of Microsoft Mobile. The announcement of the HTC S740 brings the moribund platform back into focus.

The S740 has some of the Touch Diamond glamour grafted onto it, so it’s a good looking handset. 

With Mobile Standard 6.1, dual band HSDPA, WiFi, a 3.2 Mpx camera and an effective looking pull out keyboard should make it a competitor to the Nokia E71. Though this is unlikely.

There appears to be no enthusiasm for the Standard Mobile platform, with few networks actively pushing devices, where their main focus is Mobile Pro, Symbian and BlackBerry.

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PC Magazine: Ideally a GPS device–or as Sony likes to call it, a personal navigation system–should do one thing very well: namely get you to your destination by providing point-to-point directions.

But Sony (being Sony) also knows that once you have a screen and some memory, the device can do so much more. Sony announced four new models that are packed with so many features, it almost doesn’t feel right to call them GPS devices at all.

The top-of-the-line NV-U94T can play MP3 and non-DRM ACC music files, and does double duty as an audio/video player complete with stereo Bluetooth technology for streaming audio. It can be used to make hands-free calls from compatible handsets, while the 4.8-inch 16:9-aspect-ratio LCD screen can also be used to view photos via a Memory Stick.

All of the new models from Sony will also feature more brand icons, improved search functionality, and photo-viewing features. The NV-U84 will have a 4.8-inch screen, while the NV-U74T comes with a 4.3-inch screen. The economy-priced NV-U44 model offers a 3.5-inch screen (with a 4:3 radio).

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PC World: The future for consumer electronics looks bright and high oil prices will help the industry, according to Hans-Joachim Kamp, who spoke at IFA in Berlin last Wednesday.

“Because of high oil and gas prices, we will again see a cocooning effect,” said Kamp, CEO of Philips in Germany, Austria, Switzerland.

“Instead of spending money on expensive vacations abroad, consumers will spend their money at home, buying, for example, flat-screen TVs”, he said. Price erosion has made it possible for almost everyone to upgrade, and there is still a large untapped market.

“There are still 170 million old CRT TVs in Europe,” said Kamp.

But some of the numbers don’t look that good; the overall market in Western Europe is expected to shrink by 2.4 percent during 2008. The reason for that is mainly a weak market in the U.K. The U.K. consumer electronics market value shrank by 11 percent during the first half of 2008.

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T3: Sony has proudly introduced us to the KDL-40ZX1, now officially the skinniest LCD in the world, ever.

At 9.9mm thick, it weighs in at a weedy 12.2kg. But just because it’s so thin doesn’t mean it hasn’t got the rest of the goods – this 40″ beauty still rocks 1080p resolutions and includes Sony’s Bravia Engine 2 and 120Hz MotionFlow tech.

Other specs include a 3000:1 contrast ratio, 178 degree viewing angle and a single, lonely HDMI port (there’s a good reason for this though).

But anorexic though it is, the ZX1 is still beaten by the Sony XEL-1 OLED screen, which boasts an incredible 3mm thickness and a far better contrast ratio. However, the XEL-1 is only 11″ wide and OLED still has a long way to go before it reaches the size of LCD, so in the meantime this seems like an excellent compromise.

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TrustedReviews: Wireless audio is quickly becoming one of our favourite things and Philips is one of many companies pushing it. At its press conference yesterday it announced a new Streamium Hi-Fi system.

Its new system, called the MCi-500H, is set to compete against the Sony Giga Juke NAS SC55PKE, while joining the all-in-one system already available, the Streamium WACS7500.

Offering a total audio output of 100W (50W per channel) from two speakers featuring 5.25in woofers and soft-dome tweeters, it boasts a USB connection for connecting hard drives, music players and other peripherals and a 160GB hard drive.

This provides storage for ripping CDs at up to 320Kbps MP3 and also for importing music collections. Wireless is only 802.11g unfortunately, but this is more than sufficient for audio streaming even if it does limit the wireless range.

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Engadget: Panasonic’s welcoming you to the future of plasma HDTV, starting along with the stunning 150-inch 4K plasma, that is, surprisingly enough bigger than its old 103-inch model leading to the debut of three “super thin” plasma prototypes measuring 24.7mm deep in 50-inch and, for what it claims is the first time, 58- and 65-inch sizes that also include Wireless HD.

One-fourth the thickness of current Panasonic models and one-half the weight combined with no wires leads Panasonic to believe we’ll be able to reorganize the living room shortly, without silly mounting issues and need to run cables.

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