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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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Register Hardware: A trio of psychology reports examining the benefits of videogames have unanimously concluded that some titles can have positive effects on their players.

The research, which was released at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston, Massachusetts, found that people of all ages and from all walks can benefit from certain types of videogames, such as brain training and educational games.

For example, one research paper conducted by psychologists Fran Blumberg and Sabrina Ismailer from Fordham University, New York measured the ability of 122 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-grade US school children to problem solve while playing a videogame. The kids had to think aloud for 20 minutes, while playing the title, and researchers assessed their problem-solving ability by examining the types of “cognitive, goal-oriented, game-oriented, emotional and contextual statements” the young gamers made.

“Younger children may show a greater need for focusing on small aspects of a given problem than older children, even in a leisure-based situation such as playing video games,” concluded Blumberg.

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Eurogamer: Microsoft is introducing the 60GB Xbox 360 Premium hardware bundle in European this Friday.

The unit will cost EUR 269.99, which is the same as 20GB bundle it’s replacing.

Microsoft gave no indication whether the 20GB Premium bundles will be reduced in price while stocks last – as they will in the US.

The standalone 60GB hard drive is expected to follow, although Microsoft has yet to concrete any plans.

The 60GB Xbox 360 comes with an HDMI port, wireless pad, wired headset and one-month subscription to Xbox Live.

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PC World: A weakening global economy will soon cause consumers worldwide to slow spending on electronics products, a Gartner analyst warned on Monday.

“In coming months we expect to see signs of a widespread slowdown in the electronics sector, which would directly impact semiconductor sales,” said Richard Gordon, analyst at Gartner, in the market researcher’s Semiconductor Monday DQ Report. The chip industry likely won’t start to recover until the second half of next year.

The impact of the credit crunch on the U.S., and to some degree European, housing markets, along with high energy prices directly hurting consumers, will lead to slower spending on electronics gear, he said.

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Electronista: Epson announced the release of its new multimedia photo viewers for professional photographers on the go, with the P-6000 and P-7000.

Either gives photographers the ability to download and view their digital photos on 4-inch, 640×480 (VGA) resolution LCD screens that are capable of displaying over 16.7 million colors.

The P-6000 sports an 80GB hard-disk drive, with the P-7000 upping it to 160GB and both feature a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 connection that allows download speeds up to one third faster than the models they sit atop in Epson’s range, the P-3000 and P-5000.

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Electronista: The Consumer Electronics Association is considering implementing technical standards for handhelds and other home electronics. The organization says it has formed a discussion group that would gauge interest in a cross-platform standard that would ensure digital cameras, GPS navigators, MP3 players, and video screens all obey a certain minimum standard for integrating with other devices in the home.

The CEA isn’t yet willing to describe the full nature of the possible standard but would require that devices all integrate in a similar way with audio and video home theater equipment as well as in-car mapping and media systems.

Creating a common standard would potentially spike interest in these devices as customers would know that one piece of electronics would work properly with a given accessory, according to CEA VP Brian Markwalter.

It’s unclear as to whether this would force hardware changes or would be limited to software.

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Techradar.com: It’s only six months since we first clapped eyes on it in the research labs, but KDDI’s new super-fast version of the wireless infrared link appears ready for the prime time.

The Japanese telco’s Giga-IR technology has been demonstrated at a trade show this week near Tokyo, where gadget makers were able to get a hands-on with the 1Gbit/s alternative to Bluetooth.

Unlike standard infrared, which has an upper limit of 4Mbit/s, Giga-IR can be used to share large amounts of data between devices.

KDDI says it has deliberately targeted a higher class of wireless link to distinguish Giga-IR from Bluetooth and other cable-free rivals.

A spokesperson said, “We aimed at a sharp increase in data rates, considering rates of around 100Mbit/s are not fast enough to differentiate our technology from existing wireless technologies.”

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The Inquirer: Hot on the release of the iPhone 3G comes a sequel to Nokia’s reigning king.

The successor to the N95, the N96, will be released in September, on UK mobile network 3, according to T3.

In comparison to its predecessor, the N96 will come with double the maximum storage – 16GB, comparable to the top-spec’d 3G Iphone.

Although the device isn’t touch-screen based, it does sport a 5-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera, with dual LED flash, and comes with instant upload tools for Flickr, Vox, Yahoo! and Google.

It also comes with an expendable memory slot, using MicroSD.

It’ll come coupled with HSDPA (3.5G data rates) and contain an on-board radio.

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Channel 4: Portable gadgets that keep youngsters occupied in cars are leading to parents getting more restless than their children on long trips, it was disclosed.

As many as 56% of youngsters play with hand-held games consoles on journeys, a survey by More Than car insurance showed.

And 50% of children drown out the sounds of their parents’ “golden oldies” music by listening to their MP3 players.

The survey found that it takes parents just 24 minutes to utter the well-know words “Are we there yet?” on journeys compared with 90 minutes for children.

As many as 10% of the 1,000 parents polled said it took just 10 minutes for the first signs of irritation to creep in, with 10% saying they got nervous before trips because so many arguments ensued.

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MarketWatch: Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Worldwide Digital Photo Frame TFT-LCD Module Forecast, 2008 – 2012″ report to their offering.

Following the market demand surge in the period 2006 – 2007, digital photo frames have become a mainstream product in the consumer electronics market.

In the first half of 2008, nevertheless, channel players began to report inventory buildups on weak shipments of TFT-LCD modules for digital photo frames.

What with the warm reception of digital photo frame features and functions in the European and North American markets and what with the inventory clearance sale about to be launched by branded vendors, shipment volume of TFT-LCD modules for digital photo frames is projected to see further growth in the next few years.

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Ars Technica: LCDs still have a lot of room for improvement, as they only transmit 5-10 percent of the total backlight to the user, and can account for up to 30 percent of the total power consumption of a laptop.

In this week’s Nature Photonics, researchers from Microsoft and the University of Washington report a new display technology called “telescopic pixel” that transmits 36 percent of backlight radiation.

The new pixel design is based on a tried-and-true technology: the optical telescope. Each pixel consists of two opposing mirrors where the primary mirror can change shape under an applied voltage. When the pixel is off, the primary and secondary mirrors are parallel and reflect all of the incoming light back into the light source. When the pixel is on, the primary mirror deforms into a parabolic shape that focuses light onto the secondary mirror. The secondary mirror then reflects the light through a hole in the primary mirror and onto the display screen.

Given the substantial performance gains, amenability to current fabrication methods, and Microsoft’s involvement, this report could signal the beginning of a new display technology. These displays have the potential to be faster than LCDs, more scalable than plasma, and cheaper and more energy efficient than both.

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Gizmodo: Microsoft’s getting some competition for its Surface device.

Panasonic is showing off a very Surface-like product it’s calling Digital Wall, and it’s exactly what it sounds like.

While at this point it doesn’t appear to offer all the the features of Surface it could also come in much cheaper that the Microsoft version, and for many people that’s the key.

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