about-electronics.eu

ElectricPig: After the success of the Wii, we’d forgive Nintendo for taking time out to give themselves a pat on the back, but not a bit of it: The Big N’s president says its already hard at work on the console’s successor.

Speaking to Forbes, Satoru Iwata said the company is “always preparing for the next hardware” but that ultimately, it’s the games and the experience that will sell a console.

“The hardware is a kind of box that consumers reluctantly buy in order to play our games,” he said. Adding that the next-gen Wii is still very much “under development.”

read more

Crave: We can’t persuade you to love Ambilight, but if you do like Philips’ system for extending the TV experience by shining lights on a wall, you’ll be thrilled by the 42-inch 42PFL9703.

Ambilight is hardly new, so what differentiates this set from the ones that have gone before it? For a start, the 9703 is more stylish than every one of the Philips TVs we’ve seen before. It has funky rounded corners, a cool lip that directs sound out to the front of the screen, and around the back, a three-side Ambilight. Previously, the Ambilight TVs only had glowy bits on the left and right (apart from Aurea, which is a different kettle of fish).

Design and flashing lights aside, the 9703 is a well-specified TV. There are four HDMI sockets, which we’re always pleased to see on a large-screen TV, and a bunch of other connections, including component, VGA and a pair of Scarts.

The TV is a full 1080p panel, as you’d expect, meaning your Blu-ray discs and PS3 should look top-notch. Philips is also proud of its 100Hz Perfect Pixel HD Engine, which it claims will reduce motion blur and on-screen noise.

read more

DVICE: NEC Corp’s PaPeRo robotic buddy is much like the home robots that assist with controlling your household electronics, though PaPeRo won’t stop helping you when you leave the house. It also doubles as an assistant in the car, and it’ll use the knowledge it’s gained aiding you around the house to give you directions.

NEC gave the example of a driver trying to get to Yokohama in Japan for a date. Based on previous conversations between the driver and PaPeRo (containing information pertinent to the date), the ‘bot will work out what it can with a home server and toss the best route onto a dash-mounted GPS unit, which also has a bobbing little PaPeRo floating around on the screen to continue helping out.

If it doesn’t have enough information, it’ll ask you questions until it knows what it needs to — and remember the answers.

read more

Unbeatable: Samsung are releasing of a new range of LCD TV’s. The Samsung 950 series (or Series 9) is the latest addition which has many exciting features such as a 1,000,000:1 Contrast Ratio which Samsung have managed to achieve by using a LED-lit panel rather than the usual CCFL lighting.

This, along with an improved image processing engine has enabled Samsung to produce a Contrast Ratio that is double that of their last LCD TV range.

Samsung are also launching a range of Plasma TV’s which also offer the same 1,000,000:1 Contrast Ratio, the 760 Series. This series also offers 18-bit colour processing, automatic image calibration to adjust the image to suit the lighting conditions as well as the broad connectivity options as the Series 9 range. These plasma TV’s will be available in sizes 50″, 58″ & 63″.
 
Series 8 also has two new LCD TV’s to add to the collection, a 46″ and 52″ model.

read more

I4U News: LG unveiled a tilting Flat Screen TV wall mount that is 50% thinner than former solutions.

The new wall mount has a depth of only 25mm. Today when flat screen TVs get thinner and thinner, it is of course important to have wall mounts that are as thin as possible too.

In case you do not need tilting the wall mount is just a steel bracket and there is no space lost between wall and screen.

read more