Gadgets Connect

Sony announced its intention to enter into a joint venture with Sharp concerning LCD panel production. More specifically, Sony is going to buy a one-third share in Sharp’s latest LCD panel plant that isn’t scheduled to be finished until 2010.

The new plant is located in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, Japan and uses tenth generation glass substrates. Its production capacity will be 72,000 panels a month at full-capacity, but 36,000 per month to begin with. Tenth generation production facilities allow for greater capacity and therefore more efficient production than older, earlier generation plants.

The joint venture will see the formation of a new company around April 2009 and is being seen as benefiting both companies.

(Read the full post about ‘Sony takes major stake in Sharp LCD plant’…)

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Scene It? Music Edition DVD Game CAUTION! Seriously eliminates mass tedium. Dinner parties expose you to many dangers - perhaps the biggest being tedious conversation. See price Tags: sat-nav, gaming, robots, dvr (Read the full post about ‘Scene It? Music Edition DVD Game’…)

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Fruit Bowl - Football Are you a footy fan well why not show that you are with this very nice football fruit bowl? Cleverly designed bowl looks exactly like a deflated football.Quality made ceramic bowl ideal for fruit, keys, loose change etc.Dimensions: diameter 210mm Technorati Tags: Kitchen gadgets Tags: gadgets, ipod, pvp, cameras (Read the full post about ‘Fruit Bowl - Football’…)

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iTurbo ipod Charger You can have this for ?19.99 Tags: CD, hdtv, camera, mobiles (Read the full post about ‘iTurbo iPod Charger’…)

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CFast is a new, CompactFlash based card format which will use a SATA interface to deliver much faster data transfer.

The cards, which will come to market in the next two years, offer theoretical speeds of up to 375MB/sec, much better than the 45MB/sec in current CompactFlash cards. These will be most useful in still cameras and Hi-Def video cameras, where a major bottleneck exists in dumping the image data from the camera to the card.

There’s a catch, though. Despite being related to CompactFlash, CFast is neither backward nor forward compatible. The old cards won’t work in the new slots, and vice versa, so it looks like you’ll have to dump all your old cards into the bottom drawer, next to the Zip disks and floppies.

(Read the full post about ‘New, Faster CompactFlash Card Will Break Compatibility’…)

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Posted Feb 27th 2008 12:51PM by Darren MurphFiled under: Displays, HDTV There’s displays made for digital signage, and then there’s Samsung’s SyncMaster 820DXn. Put simply, there’s no commercial screen we’d rather have sitting in our living room, and while we doubt many would go for it, the specs here are pretty impressive. Outside of the expansive 82-inch 1,920 x 1,080 resolution S-PVA panel, you’ll find 178-degree viewing angles, a 5,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, “ultra-high” brightness levels, eight-millisecond response time and the firm’s own DNIe PRO image enhancement technology. It also includes built-in fans for extended usage along with an integrated PC consisting of an 1.8GHz Athlon64 X2 3400+ CPU, 4GB of flash storage, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, an ATI graphics set and Windows XP to boot. (Read the full post about ‘Samsung’s 82-inch SyncMaster 820DXn sports a built-in computer’…)

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Gear4 has just rolled out the WorldTour Dual Charge that enables users to charge up their depleted ipod batteries as well as other USB-charged device simultaneously. It features 2 amps of power, ensuring that you will be able to charge up to two devices at once without experiencing any loss of power. Perfect for those who tend to tdo a whole lot of traveling since making your way through the US, Canada, Australia and Europe requires you to carry only one charger. March is the debut date for the WorldTour Dual Charge, retailing for £20.00. (Read the full post about ‘Gear4 WorldTour Dual Charge’…)

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Posted Feb 26th 2008 11:11PM by Donald MelansonFiled under: Gaming This hack is neither cheap nor easy, but if for some reason you just have to pull off a feat of Guitar Hero virtuosity but lack the necessary skill, the folks at SYSTM have now provided details on how to automate the controller so you never miss a note. At the heart of the hack is a so-called “show control system,” which runs a hefty $210 but will let you program all the necessary strums and button presses with some seemingly not to difficult to use software. Of course, there’s also the little matter of cracking open the guitar and wiring everything up, but we’re guessing that won’t be much of a problem for anyone actually still considering the hack. (Read the full post about ‘Hack automates Guitar Hero, for times when a fake guitar isn’t fake enough’…)

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Posted Feb 26th 2008 4:52PM by Ryan BlockFiled under: Features, Home Entertainment, Portable Audio We thought Sony showed a bit of wisdom and discretion by leaving the PFR-V1s overseas, but we were wrong. The $500 “personal field speakers” are definitely headed Stateside, and it’s just as we feared: they may sound decent enough to justify the price, but honestly, no one is going to wear these. Really, no one. Probably not even around the house, even despite the fact that they’re not really that uncomfortable. See our pained facial expression after the break.Gallery: Sony PFR-V1 WTFones ears-off Features built-in awkward humiliation. (Read the full post about ‘Sony PFR-V1 WTFones ears-off’…)

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Posted Feb 26th 2008 1:51PM by Ryan BlockFiled under: HDTV, Home Entertainment Those at all curious for some thoughts and initial reactions to Sony’s new S-AIR wireless system and their first big Blu-ray player launches since the end of the format war, head on over to Engadget HD! We’ll have more for you from Sony’s Open House 2008 shortly.Sony BDR-S350 and S550 profile 2.0 player hands-onsSony S-AIR hands-onTags: gaming, DVD, DAB, home cinema (Read the full post about ‘Checking out Sony’s S-AIR, BDP-S350, and S550 at EHD’…)

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