Philips intros 20-inch 3D display -- no need for gaudy glasses

from Engadget by Darren Murph

Don't count Philips as the first outfit to dream up a 3D display that allowed you to leave the eyewear at home, but it looks like the technology is coming ever closer to the mainstream -- for better or worse. The firm has reportedly developed a 20-inch LCD "designed to increase brand awareness and attention value of products at point-of-sale locations," and is showing off the (literally) eye-popping effects at this week's InfoComm. Of course, this rendition seems to be aimed at businesses rather than consumer applications, but we'd expect to see more where this came from as the WOWvx-equipped lineup expands. The newest duo consists of a frame-mountable 20-3D2W01 (pictured above) and a more decorated 20-3D2W04 if you're wanting a bezel and stand. As expected, there's no word yet on pricing or availability, but feel free to peep another shot of the third-dimension after the break.

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Levi's intros shiny new cellphones

from Engadget by Donald Melanson

Levi's made its cellphone intentions pretty well known late last year, but it's just now following through with them, trotting out its new line of self-branded phones made with more than a little help from ModeLabs. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot in the way of technical details at the moment, but Levi's is more than willing to talk up the phone's various style advantages, including its riveted steel casing and detachable chain. From the looks of it, you'll also be able to get the phone in your choice of five color schemes, including metallic silver, black, brown copper, "shiny silver," and "shiny sand" -- the latter two of which also come with "mirror" screens. More details should be trickling out as we near the phone's September launch date, which appears to be confined to Europe for the time being.

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Apple TV with YouTube: v1.1 update hands-on

from Engadget by Ryan Block

As we heard earlier this morning, the Apple TV v1.1 update with YouTube finally went out, so naturally we had to kick the tires. It works exactly as advertised (and shown by Jobs at D), but there are a few things we discovered.

• The update isn't available through iTunes, as you might expect -- it's either pushed out automatically directly to the ATV (it checks for updates weekly, and prompts if you want to install), or through manual update in the ATV's settings.
• The update process took about 9 minutes to download and install. Not nearly as bad as a TiVo update, but we still wish it would have been a bit faster.
• YouTube appears in the main dash, as expected. Users must log in with their YouTube account to rate videos, save to favorites, etc., but users who aren't logged in still get a video history.
• Using a keyboard on the Apple TV's USB port sure would be nice for logging in, searching videos, etc. -- we tried, it's still disabled.
• Video quality looks pretty decent, all things considered. YouTube regulars will be more than satiated.
• It was clear not everything has converted for Apple TV yet -- Engadget's smattering of YouTube videos were nowhere to be found. For shame!
• Unfortunately, you still can't fast forward further than the buffer has streamed, like you can with Google video.
• Apple also added an iTunes Store menu in the settings. Apple claims it's to set your country of origin so the top music previews aren't just assumed to be for US users.
• Other updates: parental controls setting for disabling YouTube, as well as slideshow option for screen saver.

All in all we're pretty stoked. How much of a friggin pain is it to watch YouTube videos with your friends on your TV? (Don't act like you've never tried.) If you're an Apple TV owner you'll no doubt be using this more than you'd probably like to admit.

Gallery: Apple TV with YouTube: v1.1 update hands-on

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NVIDIA launches Tesla: GPUs are the new CPUs

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

We've seen a couple cautious attempts at leveraging the raw floating-point capabilities of modern high-powered graphics cards, but NVIDIA is taking the gloves off with the launch of Tesla, its new general-purpose computing platform built on the 8-series graphics cards we all know and love. According to NVIDIA, the only way to skirt the inevitable collapse of Moore's Law is to join the GPU and CPU together, so two of the three Tesla configs are in the form of workstation upgrades -- a $1,499 single GPU PCI Express card and a $7,500 dual-GPU "deskside supercomputer" that plugs into a custom PCI controller. The truly crazy can pony up a full $12,000 for NVIDIA's first rack units, the four-GPU Tesla S870, which has a peak performance of 2 Teraflops. We're hearing the card and deskside unit will be available in August and that the servers will start shipping in November or December -- perfect for the Engadget Folding@Home holiday rush.

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JVC designs tiny 4k D-ILA chip

from Engadget by Erik Hanson

JVC announced at InfoComm 2007 a 1.27-inch 4K2K D-ILA chip for use in projectors that offer up more than four times high-definition resolution. Intended initially for medical, modeling, and simulation use, the chip can produce a ten-megapixel 4096x2400 pixel image with a 20,000:1 contrast ratio. While DLP-based 4K projectors are currently in use in some digital cinemas, the JVC chip will be used in D-ILA, a variant of LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon), and has a higher pixel density. Much like professional racing technologies trickle down to the average sedan on the street, the research that goes into 4K projectors can also make their way to HDTVs in the home, bringing smaller, higher-definition sets to a living room near you. We say bring on the quad-split-screen HD!

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