Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

While the Claro TV fights off the dimness so often associated with watching front-projection in broad daylight, and Planar’s Xscreen claims to work without the gargantuous pricetag, now there’s yet another firm in the mix of miracle-working screens. Germany’s DNP has unveiled the Supernova Flex Screen, which claims to deliver “ten times” the contrast and “double” the brightness compared to standard screens when used in daylight. Available in both fixed and retractable versions, and in widescreen sizes up to 120-inches (100-inches for 4:3 versions), the Supernova is reportedly compatible with all LCD, DLP, and LCoS projectors. It also sports an “ultrafine” .0065-millimeter pitch along with a “high-contrast filter” that allows the projected image to be reflected by the screen while it absorbs incidental light from other sources. While we’ve no idea how much DNP plans to charge for this daylight-friendly device (nor if it actually works as claimed), we shouldn’t have to wait around too much longer to find out.

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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, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Sure, we’ve heard the heartwarming stories of SMS savings a boy’s life and TiVo preventing a man from heading to prison, but this round of “Gadgets Saving Lives” features none other than the token iPod as the center of attention. While Griffin has long since had the idea of using the iPod to power a flashlight-type device, a mushroom hunter (yes, they do exactly as the title describes) resorted to the backlit LCD in his Apple in order to lead rescuers to his location. While enjoying a presumably thrilling evening of picking ’shrooms from the wild brush in Vancouver, Washington with his mother, Pini Nou somehow found himself off the beaten path and lost under a cover of darkness (and wild grass, too). By phoning in authorities and faintly describing his surroundings, troops were able to get close enough to view the white glow emitted from his PMP, and 20 minutes later he was safe and sound, albeit “cold, tired, and aching.” So, there you have it kids, the ultimate excuse to get an iPod for the holidays — safety.

[Thanks, Napo M.]

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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: Displays, Home Entertainment

While it’s tough to deny the wow-factor involved in watching a flick or gaming it up on a wall-sized screen, the one dig that front projection has been forced to deal with is the necessity of darkness for optimal viewing pleasure. Planar has reportedly developed a specially designed screen that works with any front projector to provide a “colorful, sharp image” even with all the lights on. This widescreen display, dubbed the Xscreen, pulls off the seemingly impossible by sporting a 4mm layer of hardened glass beneath the actual screen, which apparently provides the “perfectly flat” surface needed to reflect those random rays of light that currently cause all that viewing frustration in lit environments. If that wasn’t enough, Planar’s design team stepped it up a notch by crafting a “black high-gloss finish frame sure to enhance any décor,” which is presumably an attempt to overcome the Xscreen’s inability to roll up and out of the way like other screens without a glass backpanel. While the Xscreen is nothing more than a display, the Xscreen Plus offers a smorgasbord of standard video and audio inputs / outputs (DVI, VGA, component, S-video, RCA, etc.) to make routing those lengthy cable runs a bit more manageable; the upgraded version also rocks “Pixelworks video processing,” onboard speakers, a universal remote, and Europeans even get the luxury of dual TV tuners (got beef with America, Planar?). While both flavors are available in 60-, 70-, 80-, and 100-inch sizes, there’s no telling how much this gigantic blank picture frame / front projection display will run you — but until we get some face time with this enlightening panel to determine marvel or gimmick, you’re probably better off left in the dark.

[Via Gizmag]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Remember when we saw one of NEC’s laptops equipped with NXT’s SoundVu, and we jokingly mentioned how we didn’t think it could cut it in a home theater system? Well apparently Authentic Ltd. thinks otherwise, because they’ve just announced their, ahem, ASS-60AK front projection screen, that doubles as a display surface and a speaker. The screen, which vibrates at a rate undetectable to the human eye to create sound, is made of Teonex, a material specially designed to produce high frequencies other fabrics would absorb. The release suggests it can be used as a stand-alone speaker or as the center channel to your surround sound system, thus mimicking the acoustically transparent screens used in full-scale multiplexes. While it sounds great in theory (caugh), NXT technology has been hit or miss enough that you’d probably to hear what it actually sounds like before dropping more than $500 for your own.

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Filed under: Displays

Mitsubishi's got some new heads in Japan today. More or less run of the mill 4:3 aspect ratio heads, but the four Diamondcrysta 17-inch (RDT1713S, RDT1713V) and 19-inchers (RDT197S, RDT197V) do have an impressive pixel response as fast as 2ms, 300 and 400cd/m2 brightness (depending on the model), 1000:1 contrast ratio, and DVI. No stated price or intention to export, but when it comes to monitors like these, you've already got plenty of options on the market.

[Via Impress]

Filed under: Displays, Wearables

We love 3D, who doesn't? We'll stop at nothing to get that third dimension, you know? We put up with anaglyphs, crazy glasses, polarized glass, but ColorLink's ColorComb eyepieces (yeah yeah yeah) have an angle on the Z-axis we've never seen taken before (no no no). Their new stereoscopic 3D headgear uses those already-on-the-market six-color LED backlit LCDs to simulate 3D, and can also be used like Sharp's dual-angled screens to enforce privacy or display multiple virtual-optical screens. They also had a 17-inch SXGA 3D monitor they announced, but we aren't yet clear whether that uses the same backlit LED panels necessary for taking advantage of their ColorComb. We know, we know, wearable 3D anything will never be the same as the taunting help me Obi Wan we've been chasing for nearly 30 years, but for now we'll takes what we can gets.

[Via Let's Go Digital]

Filed under: Displays, HDTV

We're used to a lot of companies calling their products the world's largest, smallest, first or most expensive, and most of the time, we're able to deflate the hype at least a little. But in the case of the newly unveiled display at Miami's Dolphin Stadium, we may just have to hand it to them: the 720p display is a whopping 137 feet wide by 50 feet across, making its diagonal dimensions 1,750 inches. So, when stadium officials boast that it's the world's largest HD display, we really don't think we can argue with them (though we do take issue with their removal of the "s" -- but that's another story). Sort of makes those 103-inchers we were just drooling over seem kind of tiny. Then again, we're not quite sure where we could put a 1,750-incher if we actually had a chance to get one for ourselves, so a 103 will do us just fine, thanks.

Filed under: Handsets, Palm

align="right" src="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2006/04/palmtxbandw.jpg" alt="" />Could your next Treo sport
a black-and-white screen? Well, of course not all the time, but MobileRead has dug up a patent filed by the PDA and
smartphone manufacturer that would throttle a device’s screen down from Palm IIIc-style backlit color to Palm V-style
monochrome when battery power drops below a certain threshold. While the idea doesn’t seem all that innovative, Palm’s
"unique" take on this switcheroo would have the device prompt users to drop the color, and then automagically
reinstate it when some of that sweet, sweet juice was added. It’s great to see that Palm is trying to squeeze every last
drop out of their products — the screen switch could alleviate power consumption by as much as 75% — but we’d prefer
them to focus that zeal on other areas, like, say, allowing our Treos to actually make a phone call when the battery is
still 25% full.

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Filed under: Displays

Looks like Fraunhofer's researchers aren't the only Germans able to get in on the transparent OLED thing. It appears some researchers at the Technical University of Braunschweig are claiming to have developed a technique for embedding OLED pixels on layers of transparent TFTs, creating see-through displays that could be manufactured cheaply with flexible plastics capable of withstanding extreme temperatures. Apparently the transparent displays, which were up to (and over) twice the brightness of today's displays, should be ready to rock in two years -- just in time for us to renovate the Department Of Precrime set we use act out Minority Report in during our lunch hour. Is it now?