Filed under: Announcements, HDTV

Hard to believe Black Friday is almost upon us, but here we are, literally giving away another HDTV — Samsung’s LED DLP HL-S5679W. Specs:

• 56-inch LED backlit 1080p display
• DNIe video enhancer and Cinema Smooth light engine
• 4,000:1 contrast ratio
• Built-in NTSC / ATSC tuners with PIP
• 2 HDMI, 2 component, 3 composite, and 2 S-Video inputs
• We’re also throwing in a 6-foot HDMI cable from eHDMI

Do yourself a favor and enter to win it over at Engadget HD, ok?

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

So you’ve got one of them nifty Wii GiftCards, do ya? Don’t feel bad, neither do we. But from what we’ve read, the little Target card can be used to buy anything in the store, which doesn’t really have much to do with the Wii other than to promote it. If you press the power button on the top of the card, the sides light up like a Christmas tree (that is, assuming your Christmas tree glows solid blue for 10 seconds). Well, those crazy cats at Instructables have put together a series of instructions as to how to disassemble this card, and what you might be able to do with it if you did. They discovererd exactly what types of timers, resistors and batteries are in this little number, and gave some suggestions as to what to do with ‘em, including changing the LED colors, altering the logos on the top, or our favorite: attaching a lanyard. Because if you’re going to go to the trouble of taking apart a card like this, nothing says classy geek style like a lanyard.

[Via MAKE: Blog]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

If you’re someone who can easily read other people’s emotions, then you probably won’t be getting a SHOJI (Symbiotic Hosting Online Jog Instrument) anytime soon. For the rest of us, we’ll have to rely on this latest invention from our friends at the University of Tokyo and GS Yuasa. The SHOJI apparently can sense the “mood” of a room by monitoring light levels, temperature, humidity, infrared, ultrasonic waves, the “presence and movement of people,” (not unlike that Mitsubishi air conditioner we saw recently) body temperature, and “the nature of activity in the room,” whatever that is. All of that data is then compiled and computed to output to an LED flask sort of thing which displays red for anger, blue for sadness, yellow for happiness and green for peace. Apparently Japanese managers and hospitals are willing to pay a hefty price for this privilege, given that it’ll cost between ¥300,000 and ¥400,000 ($2,500 to $3,300) when its released in April 2007. Still, the SHOJI is no KotoHana flower, that’s for sure.

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Household, Storage

If you’ve ever turned on a computer, you can thank Shuji “Fiat Lux” Nakamura for the LED that glows back at you. This University of California, Santa Barbara-based professor was recently awarded the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize by the government of Finland yesterday for his work on light emitting diodes. The previous winner of the first prize went in 2004 to Tim “The Webfather” Berners-Lee — and Nakamura, like Sir Tim and each future winner of this biannual prize, takes home a cool €1 million. Nakamura has also worked on the blue laser diode that is used in the reading of Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. Maybe we can now get Nakamura to use his smarts to go after the Nobel Peace Prize by solving the Blu-ray / HD DVD format war.

[Via BBC]

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Filed under: Displays

In a slug-fest destined for Betamax v. VHS proportions, the adaptive ambient lighting battle roy-ale is about to go down in The Netherlands. Dutch upstarts, ARE (Ambient Reality Effects) are looking to undercut cross-town rivals Philips, with a low-cost Ambilight alternative. For a, uh, not so low-cost $255, ARE will send you their Basic Starter package to project color behind your TV or computer monitor for hot, mood enhancing fun without the risk of flashback or scuffles with the 5-0. The kit contains a USB controller, software, and a single “high quality” LED strip fitted with 10, multi-colored RGB LED light sources for placement behind your display. The controller supports up to four strips to bring the economic hurt on Philip’s Full Surround Ambilight action. So best stock-up on canned foods folks ’cause when word gets out there’ll be pandaemonium — sure, it’ll be pleasant and soothing, but pandaemonium nevertheless.

[Via Pocket-Link]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Need a way to spruce up the house, but don’t quite have the coin for your very own talking mirror? Chris Owens, a design student at North Carolina State University, has crafted the perfect conversation piece using a common household item and LED lighting. While this was engineered for an assignment, the Illume LED display shelf has all the makings of a retail hit. The wall-mounted shelf has three platters which seem fairly typical — until you place an object on them. Then each section illuminates as LED lights below are triggered by weight on the touch-sensitive panels, which makes putting things away — especially glass or semi-transparent objects — a bit more entertaining than usual. While an estimated price and release date is unknown, it seems safe to say that Chris has a bright future ahead of him (ahem), and if LED-infused furniture suits your fancy be sure to check out the Illume in action.

[Via TechEBlog]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

We’ve been waiting on this one for a good long while, but we’re pleased to say that if your chosen flavor of TV happens to be a 1080p, LED-based DLP set with 56-inches of screen real estate and a hard to remember model number, Samsung has just the display for you. Their HL-S5679W packs in a 4000:1 contrast ratio, HDMI input, analog/digital tuner, and of course that 20,000 hour lifespan, speedy startup and heat and energy savings provided by the LED backlit pixels. It’s shipping now with a MSRP of $4,199, but the word is you can nab one for around $4,000 on a certain proverbial street.

[Via HD Beat]

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Filed under: Displays, Wearables

If for some reason you feel the need to sport a set of obnoxious LED displays on your head, you might as well go all out and embed them in the ugliest hat you can find. Lain over at LushProjects is one person who felt such a need, and spent over six months designing and building the, um, unique piece of headwear you see pictured above -- which besides displaying the text message of your choice, also throws down a pretty mean game of Pong or simulated Space Invaders. To liven things up a bit, Lain even tossed in a microphone and amp, so that fellow concert-goers need only glance over at his creation for a graphical representation of the music blasting at a show. We're not sure if the hat actually lets you play a real game of Pong or not, but even if it does, having strangers stand inches from our face while tugging on our ear flaps doesn't sound all that appealing - we'll stick with our Pong clock for now, thanks.

[Via Make and Hack-A-Day]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Laptops

Some of the best do-it-yourself projects are ones that give you the functionality of an expensive commercial product on the cheap, and such is the case with RafkeP’s MoMoLight “Movie Mood Light” mod, which lets you endow your laptop or PC monitor with the same type of peripheral lighting found in Philips’ Ambilight displays. Unfortunately, also like many of the best DIY projects, this one requires no small amount of electronics knowledge and programming skills, as you have to modify your own micro-controller, procure and install your own cold-cathodes or LED strips, and then tweak the necessary software to get the effects synced with the on-screen action. Luckily RafkeP has taken at least some of the hard work upon himself and posted the directshow filter he wrote for real-time analysis of on-screen colors, making the build a lot easier once you’ve assembled all of the hardware components. It’s still not gonna be a cakewalk to get everything functioning properly, but when you consider that a real Ambilight set costs several thousand dollars, being able to get similar results for under $90 is probably enough incentive to give this project a shot.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

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Filed under: Desktops, Displays, Misc. Gadgets, Home Entertainment

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Portable Audio

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

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