Filed under: Displays

Samsung Korea has just dropped the dime on three new projectors. No word yet on pricing or a release date, but there are a few tantalizing details. For high definition video buffs, the SP-A900 offers full HD resolution, a contrast ratio of 12,000:1, Texas Instruments DarkChip4 chipset and 1,000 lumens brightness. The SP-D400 comes complete with a 3,000:1 contrast ratio and 4000 lumens brightness. As for the SP-L300, you get a 3LCD data projector with 3000 lumens brightness and an onboard speaker. Along with some swank design, all three of these projectors feature HDMI input.

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

[Via TechRadar]

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Filed under: Laptops

If HP’s latest 16-inch notebook didn’t grab you for reasons like: “That’s a whole 0.4-inches bigger than my desk,” then you’re in luck, because for about half the price you can now pick up a Pavilion G60-120US Notebook PC — HP’s first 15.6-inch model. The G60, with 1,366 x 768 resolution display, comes caked with all the ho-hum features you might expect from a $629.99 price tag: 2GHz AMD Turion X2 dual-core processor, GeForce 8200M graphics card, webcam, DVD burner, WiFi, Bluetooth, ExpressCard slot and 250GB hard drive. On the other hand, it’s got 3GB RAM, Altec Lansing speakers and HDMI output, weighing in at a palatable 6.06 pounds. Not a bad deal, who needs a lousy HDX anyway, right?

[Via Laptoping]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

A $1,500 SACD player? In 2008? Long after the never-very-popular format peaked? Thanks, Sony — we can only imagine how lopsided the gallery visit-to-purchase ratio will be on this one.

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Filed under: HDTV

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Oh sure, Sharp’s doing the whole OLED thing because of societal pressures, but it’s no secret where its passion lies. The outfit best known for its AQUOS brand has just introduced a trio of newcomers aimed at those looking for an “entry-level” HDTV: the 42-inch LC-42SB45U, 46-inch LC-46SB54U and the 52-inch LC-52SB55U. Each of the LCD HDTVs boast a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution panel, glossy piano-black finish, a pair of component jacks, a dedicated PC input and built-in NTSC / ATSC / ClearQAM tuners to boot. As for HDMI sockets, you’ll find four on the big fellow, two on the 46-incher and three on the “little guy.” The pain? Try $2,299.99 for the LC-52SB55U (available now), $1,699.99 for the LC-46SB54U (also ready to snatch right away) and $1,399.99 for the September-bound LC-42SB45U.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Vizio made some waves recently with the introduction of two bargain-priced plasmas, but it could garner attention from a whole new sect of individuals next month. Reportedly, the outfit is gearing up to launch “its first monitor tailored for dedicated PC users” in late August, the 26-inch widescreen VMM monitor. We are told that it’ll boast HDMI inputs, reduced brightness and higher resolution “than typical IT displays,” but aside from that (and the $449 price tag), the rest remains a mystery. Also of note, the company is expected to debut an “eco-friendly” line of TVs this October, which are said to “operate with 35- to 45-percent less power than traditional LCD TVs of comparable size.” Way to keep us on the edge of our seats, Vizio.

[Via Electronista]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

We’ve all dreamed of wire clutter-free home theaters for years (admit it), and Belkin is about to make things a lot easier with the FlyWire. The new wireless transmitter and receiver can send 1080p video over a 5GHz band. Belkin promises little to no interference and no latency even for you gamers. As for connections, we’re looking at three HDMI ins, two component ins, one composite, and one HDMI out. Remote control is done via IR, which should be welcome news to those of you with universal remotes. FlyWire will come in two packages: The FlyWire AV69003 at $999.99 is meant for a whole-home solution with an IR backchannel for multi-room control, while the FlyWire R1 AV69000 at $699.99 is meant for a single room without the IR backchannel. Not exactly cheap, but a heck of a lot cheaper than those custom wireless installs, and a lot more pretty than ripping a hole in your wall for cables. FlyWire should hit stores in October.

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Filed under: Desktops, Home Entertainment

Always wanted to install a little computer into your home theater but none of the available options are cutting it, what with all the giant media files and HD displays you’re rolling? Enter Acer’s Aspire X1200, which for $450 includes on-board NVIDIA GeForce 8200 graphics, an AMD Athlon X2 2850e processor, and HDMI port. Acer promises full 7.1-channel audio support as well as the guts to work with H.264, VC1, and MPEG2 and the spunk to output 1080P. The whole shebang comes in a rack-friendly 10.6 x 4.0 x 14.4-inch enclosure. Of course, prices scale up to $699 based on your needs — the latter coming with a 22-inch display — but the base price will get you a 320GB SATA II drive and the start of what could be a sweet little home theater PC.

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Filed under: Desktops, Home Entertainment

Always wanted to install a little computer into your home theater but none of the available options are cutting it, what with all the giant media files and HD displays you’re rolling? Enter Acer’s Aspire X1200, which for $450 includes on-board NVIDIA GeForce 8200 graphics, an AMD Athlon X2 2850e processor, and HDMI port. Acer promises full 7.1-channel audio support as well as the guts to work with H.264, VC1, and MPEG2 and the spunk to output 1080P. The whole shebang comes in a rack-friendly 10.6 x 4.0 x 14.4-inch enclosure. Of course, prices scale up to $699 based on your needs — the latter coming with a 22-inch display — but the base price will get you a 320GB SATA II drive and the start of what could be a sweet little home theater PC.

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Media PCs, Peripherals, Portable Audio

Earlier this month, ASUS introduced the “world’s first HDMI 1.3a compliant audio / video enhancement combo card.” Who knew numero dos was so close behind? Auzentech has just announced its very own HDMI 1.3-native PCIe audio combo card, which is built around Creative’s X-Fi processor and enables PC users to easily output 7.1-channel audio with no downsampling. Essentially, the Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater 7.1 “accepts video from either an internal or external connection, mixes it with digital audio, and outputs the combined video and lossless multichannel audio via a single HDMI 1.3 port.” Yep, that means Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio codecs are fully supported. The only digs? For one, pricing remains a mystery, but the real kicker is the September release — talk about a long wait.

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Filed under: Peripherals

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Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

NEC’s got yet another new projector rolling in for under a grand ($899, to be exact), and it’s going by the name VT800. Beyond the stark white finish, you’ll find a native XGA (1,024 x 768) resolution, an Ethernet port for remote management / control, built-in closed caption decoding, a USB port, an HDCP-compliant HDMI input, 2,700 lumens, 500:1 contrast ratio and a lamp good for around 3,000 hours. Furthermore, the unit boasts a five-watt internal speaker, PIP / ESS functionality, wall color correction presets and 3D Reform, which “squares the image by adjusting horizontally, vertically or diagonally when the projector cannot be placed parallel or perpendicular to the screen.” It’s all yours this April.

[Via AboutProjectors]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Media PCs

Asus continues to crank up its media PC related offerings, its latest are two HDMI equipped sound cards aimed at HTPC users or prosumers. Next week at CeBIT expect to see the Xonar DX sound card, a slimmed-down edition of its Xonar D2X card made to fit any PCI-E x1 equipped computer. Dolby Digital Live and DTS connect support is still part of the package, plus EAX 5.0 compatibility. Next up is the Xonar AV1, complete with three HDMI jacks and Asus’ Splendid HD chip to assist audio and video mastering. Price or release date on these is unknown but we’re sure to get a closer look once the show starts.

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Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

We’ve certainly seen our share of devices to bring your computer and TV together, but the HDTV Suite-HDMI from Asus brings it back the other way, providing a TV tuner and a variety of TV-oriented inputs for your computer monitor. The box accepts a host of inputs from HDMI to coax, converts, finesses and upscales the signal up to 1080p, and outputs over DVI or VGA, turning your old display into a viable television. The multiple inputs and TV tuner support PIP, and there’s also a bundled remote to control the on-screen menus, completing the TV makeover. Sadly, there’s no word on price, but PAL and NTSC support hints that we might see this box hit our fair shores — looks like it’s time for a monitor upgrade, eh?

[Via PCLaunches]

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Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment

No, it won’t get you “true” HDMI, but older 360 owners looking to get rid of those clunky component cables might want to take note: that MadCatz HDMI Conversion Kit is now official. The $90 adapter comes with cables and supports HDMI 1.3, 1080p, Dolby Digital and DTS — but there’s no telling what the VGA-to-HDMI signal conversion will do to your image quality, so you’re probably better off doing the eBay shuffle and getting a new 360 with HDMI built-in.

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Filed under: Displays

The boys and girls at Sony are firing on all (or a few) cylinders today, launching not one, but three new digital photo frames for your digital photo-framing pleasure. All the frames in the new lineup contain 800 x 480 WVGA displays with a Bizarro World aspect ratio of 15:9, and are capable of scaling and display pictures up to 48-megapixels in size — which we’re sure you’ll be taking advantage of real soon. The 7-inch DPF-V700 and 9-inch DPF-V900 both sport 512MB of internal storage, can communicate via Bluetooth, and have what appears to be a first in digital frames: HDMI outs. The thriftier, 7-inch DPF-D70 halves the memory and nixes the Bluetooth and HDMI, but all three frames are coupled with a remote, and can utilize Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick PRO Duo, SD, MMC, Compact Flash, Microdrive, and xD-Picture cards. The DPF-V900, DPF-V700 and DPF-V70 digital photo frames will be available for $250, $190 and $140, respectively, and will ship in March.

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Filed under: CES, Features, Home Entertainment

Readers who tuned in before CES already got the details on the Marantz VS3002 HDMI switcher, but we’ll recap really quick before we move to the pics. Six inputs and two parallel outputs, HDMI 1.3 and RS-232. And lookee here: there are six HDMI inputs and two outputs around back! This is priced at $349 and will ship in February.

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Filed under: Cellphones, CES, Handhelds, HDTV

A few companies have demoed cellphone chips capable of of HD output, but the fact is HDTV inputs weren’t designed with mobile power requirements and form factors in mind. Apparently unsatisfied by the mini HDMI connector created as part of HDMI 1.3, Silicon Image went ahead with its own design, reducing HDMI’s 19 pins to 5 while still retaining compatibility for full HD and digital audio in a package it calls Mobile High Definition Link (MHL). Cutting out any serial connector or further compression, the first MHL equipped products are the VastLane SiI9220, SiI9222 and SiI9290, which could reach cellphones near you as soon as the third quarter of this year.

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Filed under: CES, HDTV, Peripherals

We’ve seen Gefen get all riled up and unleash a barrage of new kit all at once, and sure enough, the outfit is doing just that once more. For starters, we’ve got the TV Switcher, which enables consumers to connect and access four HDMI sources from a single HDTV. Next up is the TV Splitter, which allows users to channel a single HDMI source to four displays — and yeah, both of the aforementioned units play nice with HDMI v1.3a. Moving right along, we’ve got a pair of updates to the PVR lineup; the HD PVR records in MPEG4 and can store material on the 80GB HDD or an SD card, while the SD PVR records content onto USB storage devices. Over on the sound side, the Gefen TV Audio Processor takes a single HDMI source and delivers it to a display and an external audio receiver; furthermore, it reportedly “decodes the HDMI signal to provide an audio signal along with six discrete RCA connectors.” Lastly, the firm is doling out v1.3 / Simplay HD-certified HDMI cables in 6-, 10- and 15-foot lengths, but unfortunately, it didn’t bother handing out price tags for any of the goods here.

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