Pandora's Chandelier

Posted May 23rd 2007 3:00PM by Rigel Gregg Filed under: Decor

Crystal is beautiful by its very nature, so I don't know that anybody could argue that Pandora's Chandelier isn't gorgeous, but there's more here than first meets the eye. Designed by Fredrikson Stallard, the Pandora's Chandelier consists of thousands of Swarovski crystals individually threaded on motorized wires. What starts out as a very standard and traditional silhouette is soon morphed into something smeared and messy looking, before it quietly returns to repeat the cycle all over again. A little abstract art blended with shimmering hanging Swarovski.

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Dining is an Adventure with 'Dinner In The Sky'

Posted May 23rd 2007 6:30PM by Rigel Gregg Filed under: Dining, Journeys

Now here's a concept that takes the idea of "a unique dining experience" to a whole new level, literally. Created from an idea by Belgian chef Quentin Jadoul, Dinner in the Sky is one of those things that is exactly what it sounds like: it's a large dining table that seats about 20 people and gets hoisted high up into the sky on a crane -- there's even room in the middle for the waiters to come along! And surprisingly, even though it's based in Belgium the table is mobile and travels around Europe for different events and occasions, and the menu can be adjusted to accommodate tastes for pretty much anything. For somewhere around $20,000 you can have your own "Dinner in the Sky" party, just pray for good weather and hold onto your napkin!

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$1 Million Grand Enigma Speakers Top the List of Most Expensive

Posted May 24th 2007 6:35PM by Rigel Gregg Filed under: Gadgets

Now we're just getting ridiculous. Joining the "$1 million" club is these Grand Enigma speakers by Karma, and there's apparently only 1 pair in existence in a basement somewhere in Belgium. Seeing as how there's only the one set, it really doesn't matter what the features are (it's not like you could get your own), but I'm still really curious! Just what does a set of speakers have to do to be worth that much? They look huge, but other than that I'm skeptical (I don't see any diamond accents...) and it seems feature specifics are hard to come by. And be sure to check out the rest of HigherFi.com's list of the world's most expensive speakers, with 2nd place going to Wisdom Audio's Infinite Grande at $600,000.

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Philips' 42-, 47-, and 52-inch Ambilight LCDs go 1080p, 120Hz, LED backlighting

Posted May 24th 2007 6:24AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Displays

Has it really been 10 years since the first Ambilight television? Does anyone care? After all, the press release was issued back in January at CES and missed by nearly everyone, including us. Well, Philips certainly cares and aims to celebrate by dishing out a triplet of Ambilight LCDs ranging size from 42-, 47-, and 52-inches. As you'd expect, they've got all the sweetest buzzwords covered: 1080p, 120Hz, LED backlighting. They also feature Philips' Perfect Pixel HD processing engine, plenty of HDMI inputs (3x on the 52-incher) and of course, Philips' Ambilight glow for a more immersive experience with reduced eye strain -- or so says Philips. Priced at $2,999 for the Ambilight Full Surround (independent lighting on all four sides) 42-inch 42PFL9832D (pictured) or $2,799 for the 47-inch 47PFL9732D and $3,599 for the big 52-inch 52PFL7432D with Ambilight 2 for that left and right glow. All are expected to roll Stateside as early as June.

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Sony's world's first 16.7 million color flexible OLED

Posted May 24th 2007 9:29AM by Thomas Ricker Filed under: Displays

Oh boy, another bendy display we won't likely see on the market any time soon. This time it's Sony's turn to tout with this, their 2.5-inch, 160 x 120 pixel OLED display on a flexible plastic film. Better yet, this organic TFT delivers a relatively stellar 16.7 million colors compared to the 262k and 16k colors Samsung and LG.Philips, respectively, were showing off last week. That's a world's first 24-bit color depth for these types of displays. Take that Samsung. The display also measures a mere 0.3-mm thin which easily bests the hapless Korean (and Dutch) giants. The only downside (if you call it that) is the display's "greater than" 1000:1 contrast ratio compared to Samsung's 10,000:1 rating. But by now you've learned to take contrast measurements with a grain of salt, right?

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