Digital Tech News - Digital Technology & Consumer Electronics

Nec MultiSync LCD5220 52-inch Full HD Display

NEC has announced the new 52-inch MultiSync LCD5220 full HD wide-screen display at the 2008 Digital Signage Expo. Designed for a variety of digital signage applications, NEC's MultiSync LCD5220 is the industry's first 52-inch display based on a professional-grade panel. The design is sleek, with an ultra-thin bezel (19 millimeters / 0.7 inches) and NEC has packed in some advanced features, including improved contrast, color and brightness, SpectraView II color calibration kit, and NEC's proprietary and advanced Digital Signage Technology Suite (DSTS), which includes nearly 30 advanced features that improve screen performance, and enhance display management. The MultiSync LCD5220 will be available April 2008 at an estimated price of $8,149.99. 

"The LCD5220 employs a U-shaped backlight system, leveraging fluorescent bulbs for even heat distribution and uniform brightness. In addition, the display boasts a sealed cabinet design, ideal for digital signage environments that are exposed to a variety of contaminants, such as dust, smoke and grease."

Readybot Robot is Hilarious...See for yourself

Maybe it's just the wacky music, but this Readybot kitchen-cleaning robot prototype video had me laughing up a storm. Watch it below.

The Readybot Challenge was started by a group of veteran Silicon Valley engineers with the goal of developing a consumer robot that can clean the kitchen.

SyncMaster 820DXn - Samsung's 82-Inch Digital Signage Solution

Samsung Electronics America hit the 2008 Digital Signage Expo with the new 82-inch SyncMaster 820DXn display, the company's largest and most powerful large format display. This monster is designed for corporate and commercial digital signage applications, and the $76,999 price tag reflects that. You can find digital signage used in airports, retail locations and other indoor venues, and this one features 5000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, ultra-high brightness levels, 1920 x 1080 full HD resolution, and a 178/178-degree viewing angle. The SyncMaster 820DXn also boasts a new Digital Information Display (DID) panel designed to lower the temperature of the display, resulting in a durable unit that Samsung claims will support even the most rigorous of commercial applications.

"With a built in computer, the 820DXn creates an all in one solution allowing users to drive content to the display without a separate machine. The built in computer features an AMD Athlon64 X2 3400+, 1.8 GHz dual core processor, 4 GB of flash storage memory, 512 MB DDR2 RAM, ATI Chip set with a Win XPe operating system."

Toshiba Softbank 815T PB Transformer Cellphones

Transformer fans will love this one. Toshiba's new Softbank 815T PB cellphone is ready to take over the world with its robotic look and transformer-like design. The 815T PB was developed for an upcoming Japanese teeny-bopper TV show called "Ketai Sousakan 7" and should have teens in Japan nagging their parents for one when the show airs soon. What a gimmick. 

The 3G phone is available in silver and black, and features a 3.2 megapixel camera, and QVGA screen. Apparently, the 815T PB comes with a kit, with parts that you attach or glue to the phone.  Akihabara News has a bunch of photos from the press event in Japan.

Sony Turntable Converts Vinyl Records to Digital Music Files

Sony's new PS-LX300USB turntable system with USB output will indeed convert your beloved vinyl records to digital music files, making them ready to jam on your MP3 player. The turntable is packaged with Sound Forge Audio Studio software which allows you to easily edit converted audio, and hopefully help remove pops and scratch sounds. The belt drive turntable provides fully automatic operation of vinyl playback at 33-1/3 and 45 rpm speeds, while ensuring reduced motor noise and rotational stability. The record players' static balance tone arm with a bonded diamond stylus is said to provide precise tracking and low record wear.

4 Home Theatre Component Systems from Sony

Sony has introduced four new component home theater systems designed to complement high-definition televisions and Blu-ray Disc players. The HT-SS2300 and HT-CT100 models are optimized with 1080p-capable HDMI inputs, and support full HD video and eight channels of uncompressed audio. The HT-7200DH and HT- DDWG700 models offer 5.1 channel home theater surround sound.

Sony BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 Blu-ray Disc Players

BDP-S350

Sony follows-up the BDP-S300 and BDP-S500 Blu-ray disc players with a couple of fresh new BD players that are capable of accessing advanced interactive features like BonusView and BD-Live. The BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 models both support the BonusView (Picture-in-Picture) feature found on newer blu-ray movie discs. The BDP-S350 model is BD-Live ready with an Ethernet port used for firmware updates, and access to Internet-based interactive content features.  The BSP-S550 player goes one better, supporting both BonusView and BD-Live. Both models feature an external port for adding optional flash-based memory, the BDP-S550 ships with a 1GB storage device.

BSP-S550

These Sony BD players feature 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema output, and offer 7.1 channel Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus decoding and bit-stream output, and support DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW (Video Mode), CD, CD-R/RW (CD-DA format), and JPEG on DVD//CD recordable media.                

 

Goldmund's $16,900 High-End Blu-ray Disc Player

Swiss-based company Goldmund is well known for high-end, technologically advanced, and expensive audio-video systems, so don't be surprised to see that the company's first Blu-ray disc player is priced at $16,900. If you have deep pockets, and are interested in Eidos 20 BD, you can set-up a demo appointment at the Goldmund Media Room in Los Angeles. 

Goldmund signature features found on the Eidos 20 BD include the "AC-Curator" power supply circuit which dramatically improves picture and sound stability and dynamics, and the "Mechanical Grounding" construction which removes from the player mechanism spurious vibrations blurring the video signal and increasing jitter. In addition, the new Eidos 20 BD uses the Goldmund "Magnetic Damper," a device lowering the reading errors, a feature that previously was exclusive to Goldmund's highest end devices.

iPod and iPhone Clock Radio Dock from Sony

Sony has unveiled the new ICF-ClipMK2 clock radio / dock for iPod and iPhone, available this May in black and white for the reasonable price of $100. The iPhone and iPod compatible speaker clock radio comes with a wireless remote that gives you full access to your iPod or iPhone's music menus, while also controlling the alarm clock’s radio tuning and volume functions.  As you would expect, the dock will charge your iPod or iphone. The Sony ICF-ClipMK2 comes with a cable and line-in jack so you can use other digital music players, but why would you want to do that? Just stick in your Apple device, and enjoy the the ride.

Apple's New MacBook, and MacBook Pro with Multi-Touch Trackpad

Apple has updated both the MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook lines with the latest Penryn Intel Core 2 Duo processors, larger hard drives and 2GB of memory standard in most models. Most exciting is the MacBook Pro, which now includes a Multi-Touch trackpad, and the latest NVIDIA graphics processors with up to 512MB of video memory.

"The new MacBook Pro features the latest Intel Core 2 Duo technology with up to a 2.6 GHz processor with 6MB of shared L2 cache; up to 4GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory and up to a 300GB hard drive, plus NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with up to 512MB of video memory. Every MacBook Pro now includes a trackpad with Multi-Touch gesture support for pinch, rotate and swipe, making it more intuitive than ever to zoom and rotate photos in iPhoto® or Aperture™ 2 or browse web pages in Safari™; an illuminated keyboard that makes it ideal for dimly lit environments such as airplanes, studios or conference halls and a built-in ambient light sensor, which automatically adjusts the brightness of the keys as well as the brightness of the display for optimal visibility."