Sony PC Doubles as HDTV
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Sony's new Vaio LT all-in-one does the iMac one better, bundling a CableCard connection and Blu-ray support.
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A sleek home-media PC looks creamy delicious; a carry bag becomes a chair storing laptop; and more. By Brian Lam from Wired magazine.
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(InfoWorld) - Japanese users won't have to worry about a noisy cooling fan disturbing them while they watch high-definition movies on NEC's newest computer -- the PC, equipped with a Blu-ray drive, uses water-cooling instead. A prototype of the PC, called the Valuestar X VX780/GD, was on display this week at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan. As most Japanese live in small apartments, PCs often do double-duty as both a computer and an entertainment system. But the use of cooling fans means that PCs are not as quiet as standalone DVD players, often interrupting the movie-watching experience. The use of water-cooling means NEC's Valuestar X runs quietly, making just 31 decibels of noise, or slightly more than a whisper. Priced at Â¥543,000 ($4,612), the PC is clearly not intended for people on a budget. But for those willing to pay more for a high-end system, the Valuestar X, which is due to go on sale in December and runs Microsoft's Windows XP Home Edition operating system, offers some impressive features. In addition to the Blu-ray drive and water-cooling system, the PC offers a digital television tuner, a 3.4GHz Intel Pentium D 945 processor, 1GB of RAM, and dual 250GB hard drives. It also includes a remote control and a 20-inch widescreen LCD (liquid crystal display) with internal flat-panel NXT speakers that provide surround sound.
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Vroom, vroom World-first review Apple's Apple TV and iPod. Sony's PlayStation Portable. Different devices, different applications, but united in common support of the H.264 video compression technology, part of the MPEG 4 standard. And since rather a lot of us own these gadgets, the need for H.264-encoded content is high. The snag: it takes a heck of a lot of PC processing power to produce.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Sony is aggressively promoting high-definition televisions (HDTVs) to consumers and soon it will have a range of digital still cameras to match. Many of the company'sÂ new Cybershot cameras, which will hit global markets in March and April, offer an output for HDTVs. Most current digital cameras support the ability to view pictures on a television set, but this is almost always at standard definition, which is close to VGA resolution of 640 pixels by 480 pixels. More often than not, the original image is much higher quality, so a better image could be displayed on an HDTV if the camera were capable of generating such a video image. That's what Sony has enabled its new Cybershot cameras to do. "We are strongly promoting the importance of high-definition quality," said Kiyoshi Shikano, corporate senior vice president of Sony Marketing (Japan) at a Tokyo news conference Wednesday. "Here in Japan penetration of HDTV is going up every day. It's now almost at 30 percent of households so because of that we're encouraging people to watch digital still camera pictures at the level of high-definition rather than standard level." An additional cable will be required for the high-definition connection. The VMC-MHC1 cable will go on sale on March 9 in Japan for Â¥4,935 ($41) and will connect a Cybershot to a component level input on a television. It can also connect the CSS-HD1 docking unit to a television set. While in the dock the battery in the camera can also be recharged. The HDTV output is available on the DSC-T100, T20, W200, W90, W80, H7 and H9 models. The flagship model of the range is the T100, which combines a slim body with an optical 5X zoom and 8.1-megapixel class image sensor. It has a 3-inch display and will be available in Japan and the U.S. in March for about Â¥50,000 and about $400, respectively. Â
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Consumers are racing to replace their aging televisions with high-definition TVs. Trouble is, many are still using devices and services that can't fill those HDTVs with enough visual information to make them look their best.
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Already eyeing holiday shopping, Sony readies 15 40- to 70-inch HDTVs and a high-tech remote.
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More efficient video compression; receiver add-on for TV.
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Hard-drive video recorders support HDTV, while Blu-ray and HD-DVD wait in the wings. Plus: pricey headphones and cheap megapixels.
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HDTV Wonder snags free high-definition transmissions for budget viewing.
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PlayStation 3 users will soon be able to record and playback digital TV on their games console.
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Prototype ups high-resolution display ante with whopping 4096-by-2160 resolution.
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A wealth of digital gear for consumers debuts at CES, including a revamped MediaSmart Receiver, a slim PC, multimedia notebook, storage, and monitors.
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As you may recall from my last entry, I exchanged my cable box from a Scientific Atlanta 8000HD to a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD.  The latter, new box continues to output a signal from the cable connection even if I have it in HDTV mode.  It probably also continues to output AVI and S-Video.  This finally opened up a way for me to use my cable box with a MythTV box.   Thanks to a serious (and mysterious) spinal injury (I say mysterious because I haven't figured out how I did the damage), I can only work on the project for a half hour at a time, at most.  I have discovered some interesting things in those short segments.
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Dell SP2008WFP: 20-inch wide-screen LCD monitor with Webcam
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Put your digital photos to good use and create a slide show for playback on TVs and PCs.
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More compos coming Register Hardware reader Dave Page dropped us an email this week to show us just how good his brand new Samsung PS50Q7 50in plasma HD TV looks in his living room. Dave was the winner of last month's Register Hardware Samsung HDTV Competition, and we're pleased to report he's as pleased as punch with his plasma beast.â¦