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HD News: With the arrival of mature LED TV technology, the purest deepest blacks may no longer be the preserve of Plasma screens.

LED TVs are actually LCD TVs that no longer use the traditional always-on single backlight but replace it with a myriad of individual LED backlight arrays.

The advantage of this approach is that individual LED segments can be turned on or off for improved screen performance and ultimately better black levels.

LED technology also improves the motion handling capabilities of LCD’s, in particular their problems with “motion blur” as well as providing a much richer and greater range of colour.

LCD TV’s with LED are nothing new, but a refinement of the technology, RGB LED backlighting is under development by a number of manufacturers. RGB backlighting uses controllable LED lights which offer full-colour RGB LED dimming rather than ‘black & white’ only dimming.

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Shiny Shiny: Sat Navs don’t really generate the most enthusiasm and excitement, but it’s not their fault, they do try. That may all be about to change with Navman’s rather stylish S100 – the latest addition to the S-series.

The S100 is rather nice on the eye with its slim  brushed aluminium shell with as much robustness as you’d need for something you’re going to be using on a regular basis whether you’re driving or walking to your destination. Its flat screen gives it a bit of a TV feel and at 4.3-inches it’s a decent size to navigate on.

To add to its appeal, Navman has added a few new features to the device. Clear view mapping is one of them. The idea behind this is to avoid bewilderment by emphasizing your journey on screen, so the focus remains on your journey rather than the surrounding roads. The inclusion of glide touch, an iPhone-esque way of navigating through the S100 definitely gives it added appeal.

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Register Hardware: Microsoft has commissioned two of the biggest names in consumer electronics to manufacture a Blu-ray Disc drive for the Xbox 360, market sources have claimed.

A joint venture between Samsung and Toshiba has been tasked with making the add-on drives for the console, an Xbit Labs report maintains. Although the drive’s technical specifications are still unknown, it’s alleged that the Blu-ray player will sell for between €73-110.
 
Exactly when – or, indeed, if – the Xbox Blu-ray drive will appear in the shops isn’t known either. But with the Christmas season rapidly approaching, and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) following it in Las Vegas in early January, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the drive could appear sometime between now and early 2009.

Microsoft claimed back in May this year that it had “no plans to introduce a Blu-ray drive for Xbox 360”.

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HD News: Designed to complement their ‘Rose Red’ series of LCD TV’s, Samsung’s HT-X715 home cinema solution makes a stunning stylistic addition to your Hi-Fi setup.

With the same subtle deep red tones and some gorgeous curves, Samsung’s out of the box solution includes two front speakers, two rear speakers, a centre speaker and subwoofer for 5.1 surround sound.

The built-in DVD player upscales to 1080p and you also get DivX playback along with HDMI and USB connectivity.

The HT-X715 is Bluetooth enabled which gives you the ability to play MP3 tracks straight from your mobile phone or PC.

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TechRadar: After more than half a century of making TVs, Panasonic has announced that it has become the first manufacturer to crank out 300 million sets.

The Japanese giant says the milestone Viera unit rolled off the production line on Tuesday, just 10 years after the company hit 200 million TV sets.

Panasonic’s TV business began in November 1952, when its first monochrome set arrived. That came a full year before proper broadcasts began in Japan. By 1960, the company had its first colour TV set, to be followed over the years by a range of brands including the current Viera, Saga, Quintrix, tau and Gaoo models.

For the record, Panasonic says TV number 300 million was a Viera TH-50PZR900.

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Engadget: About this time last year, Yamaha treated us to its CD-S2000 SACD player and A-S2000 amplifier, both of which sported that timeless look that was just too dazzling to hide away in some AV cabinet.

This year, the outfit is keeping with the trend by introducing the equally stunning (and even more silver) A-S700 amplifier and CD-S700 CD player.

The former features 90-watts x 2 of RMS power and gold-plated RCA inputs, while the latter includes a Burr Brown 192kHz/24bit DAC and a USB port for playing back MP3 / WMA files.

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PhysOrg: KDDI Corporation has released a prototype of the world’s first 3D LCD display, designed for mobile phones.

This unique 3D LCD display is designed for mobile phones that are capable of showing still images and video in 3D.

By using two separate LCD displays, the images are interlaced and projected on two separate LCD screens.

One display outputs an image for the left eye, while the other outputs an image for the right eye.

With each image being offset on each LCD display, you have a stereoscopic effect that tricks each eye into thinking that you have a real 3D image.

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Electronista: Microsoft yesterday at the Tokyo Game Show set an official launch date for its New Xbox Experience.

The revamped interface is now due to go live as of November 19th and is the first major change since the Xbox 360 was introduced in 2005.

As shown at E3, the new design uses a much simpler panel interface instead of the usual blades and introduces Nintendo Mii-like avatars that represent users both in the friends list and in newer games.

Coming with the new update are new Xbox 360 bundles that add games to each of the existing trim levels.

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Telegraph.co.uk: When Research In Motion, the Canadian company behind the BlackBerry, decided to make a touchscreen version of its popular mobile email device, it was taking a huge gamble.

Text input is the BlackBerry’s bread and butter – the reason it’s proved such a hit with businessmen is because it allows them to type emails quickly and easily on the go using the miniature Qwerty keyboard. 

The BlackBerry Storm is manufacturer Research in Motion’s first touchscreen phone. But it’s one that has paid off in spades – the BlackBerry Storm, Research In Motion’s first attempt at a touchscreen device, is a triumph. It’s a really powerful device with plenty of clever features, but let’s set that to one side for the moment and focus on the question people really want to know the answer to: what’s it like to type on?

A revelation, is the short answer. RIM has managed to develop a touch-screen keyboard that’s as close to typing on real buttons as you’re currently likely to get.

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MCV: Less than a week after the new Wii Speak Channel and solo hardware bundle was announced, Nintendo has announced that both will be arriving in Europe on December 5th.

Wii Speak allows users to chat to other players on their friends list both through the dedicated Wii channel and through compatible games – such as the upcoming Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To the City.

Unlike the one-person earpieces seen on the likes of Xbox 360 and PS3, the Wii Speak hardware sits on top of a user’s television and allows the whole room to join in the conversation.

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Electricpig: Steve Wozniak founded Apple with Steve Jobs, and while he doesn’t work for the company anymore, he’s still synonymous with all things fruity and Mac-flavoured.

Now he says the iPod’s days are numbered, and its only a matter of time until Apple loses its MP3-playing crown.

Interviewed by the Telegraph, Woz said “The iPod has sort of lived a long life at number one. Things like that, if you look back to transistor radios and Walkmans, they kind of die out after a while… You get to a point when they are on display everywhere, they get real cheap and they are not selling as much.”

Apple will be feeling hurt by that, but Woz also knows the solution: “Consumers aren’t getting all they want when companies are very proprietary and lock their products down”…

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Navigadget: Pioneer will truly be living up to its name when this GPS system hits the shelves. The idea is to combine a traditional GPS unit with cameras mounted on your car. The GPS unit will then “see” the road in front of you.

The good people at Pioneer believe the unit will be able to warn you of objects in the road, measure the distance between you and the car in front of you, give clearer directions after matching up the images it sees and the map data in its memory, and even suggest a more scenic route if the landscape remains unchanged.

It will be just like traveling with another person minus the annoying small talk.

Since this is a concept there is no firm date on when it will arrive.

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