Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, January 09, 2012

drag2share: Meet LG's Ultra Definition (Yep!) 84-Inch Monster TV [Televisions]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5873849/meet-lgs-ultra-definition-yep-84+inch-monster-tv

HDTV is cool, I guess, but it's going to be hard to go back after looking at LG's ultra-def 4k display, which packs four times the pixels as a 1080p set. It's mind-bogglingly crisp and enormously... enormous. Second mortgage time!

Available this July (at 84, 60, and 72 inches) for what's sure to be a startling amount, the 3480 x 2160 ultra-def LM9600 beasts will come with all the nice bullet points as the lesser LCD sets: 3D, dual-core picture processing, and motion-controlled "smart TV" apps—plus voice recognition. This starship of a TV can only do so much on paper, so we're eager to put our retinas on it as soon as we can. Still, it's enough to take some of that mythical luster off the Apple TV. Eight million pixels plus voice control. Think about it.

Just don't get too excited: remember, there's nothing out there that you can actually watch at that resolution. Yet.

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drag2share: You're Going to Need a Fat Wallet for Toshiba's Super Thin Tablet [Android]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5874180/youre-going-to-need-a-fat-wallet-for-toshibas-super-thin-tablet

Toshiba's Excite X10 Tablet is only .3 inches thin and 1.18 lbs. heavy but comes with a heavy price tag: $530 for the 16GB version and $600 for the 32GB version. While not dissimilar in pricing strategy with the iPad, it still costs $130 more than the Sony Tablet S and other just as capable Android tablets. It seems like a price drop is inevitable here.

Aside from the bloated price tag, the Excite, which is coming in the first quarter to the US, is the same tablet we previewed in September of last year: a 10.1-inch, 1280x800 resolution screen, a dual-core 1.2 GHz TI OMAP4 CPU, 1GB RAM, and Honeycomb 3.2 (upgradeable to Ice Cream Sandwich), dual cameras and 8 hours of battery life. A solid Android tablet! But how fast will the price drop?

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drag2share - drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)

drag2share: Ubuntu TV Will Be In Your Living Room This Year [Ubuntu]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5874227/ubuntu-tv-could-be-in-your-living-room-this-year

Ubuntu TV Will Be In Your Living Room This Year

The geekiest of the operating systems is branching out into entertainment. Ubuntu TV is the open-source answer to your living room set-up, and you could have a TV running the software by the end of the year.

Ubuntu TV is a TV-optimized version of the desktop OS, based around the Unity UI. It feature full-on media center and DVR features, including movie, TV and music stores, and a YouTube app. The idea is to make the OS free for manufacturers to package with their TVs, and Ubuntu says there will be TVs on shelves by the end of the year.

There's a working Ubuntu TV at CES, so more details and comment to follow. [PC Pro]

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drag2share - drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)

drag2share: Lenovo quietly outs the IdeaPad U300e, a $799 Ultrabook with a hybrid hard drive

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/08/lenovo-quietly-outs-the-ideapad-u300e-a-799-ultrabook-with-a-h/

We thought we'd seen everything Lenovo had to show here at CES. We thought wrong. In a tour of the company's showroom / trailer today, we spotted that gray laptop up there, hiding amid the X1 Hybrid, T430u Ultrabook and S200 netbook. That, friends, is the IdeaPad U300e, a cheaper, lesser-specced version of the U300s we reviewed last fall. Check our gallery below: it has the same aluminum chassis, comfortable keyboard and sprawling trackpad, though the ports appear to have played musical chairs. The only differences? For one, we're seeing the U300e (top, above the U300s) adds an Ethernet jack, something the U300s is missing. More importantly, though, the U300e costs $799, not $1,200, and instead of an SSD it sports a hybrid drive pairing a 500GB HDD with 32GB of flash storage -- essentially, the same setup you'll find in the $800 Acer Aspire S3. We're also told it'll run "next-generation" Intel processors, though Lenovo's stopping short of calling it Ivy Bridge, which Intel has yet to reveal. Not a bad deal, though we might still prefer the new U310, which has the all-important SD slot the U300s was missing, but still costs a hundred bucks less than this here U300e. Disagree with us? The U300e is expected to go on sale this month.

Gallery: Lenovo ThinkPad U300e

Lenovo quietly outs the IdeaPad U300e, a $799 Ultrabook with a hybrid hard drive originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Jan 2012 21:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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drag2share - drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)

drag2share: Hands-on Toshiba's 55-inch 4K glasses-free 3DTV

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/08/hands-on-toshibas-55-inch-4k-glasses-free-3dtv/

You remember that Toshiba glassess free 4K 3DTV we told you about? Well, we got a chance to catch up with it at a Toshiba CES event and we're happy to say it doesn't suck. Not only is the 4k mode down right breathtaking, but the autostereoscopic 3D technology has come a long, long way since we saw a demo of a prototype last year. Up to nine people can enjoy 3D on the local dimming 55-inch LED 3DTV, but the optimal number is four or less. There is an almost invisible camera in the base of the set that tracks your face and there can be circles and arrows displayed on screen that help you move to the absolute best spot -- wish all TVs made it so easy to find the sweet spot. On display was a production model for outside the US, but our slightly different version is expected in Q1 2012 for more than most have ever paid for a TV (~$10k).

Gallery: Hands-on Toshiba's 55-inch 4K glasses-free 3DTV