Technology

LG’s OLED TV Grabs Top TV Honors of CES 2012

January 12, 2012 By DJ Yoshi 1 Comment

CNet Praises the LG OLED Line

– via CNet –
This year, the company is working toward reaching that goal with the release of its first OLED TV in the American market, the 55-inch 55EM9600.

LG announced the TV in the week before CES 2012, but it might not be the only big OLED screen announced at the show; reports mention a similar TV from Samsung. While the public may remember Sony’s XEL-1 from a couple of years ago and be familiar with the AMOLED screens of various Samsung phones, LG’s EM9600 features a unique spin on the technology. While other OLEDs feature RGB (red, green, and blue) pixels, the LG adds a fourth, white pixel in a move LG says cuts costs and produces a brighter picture.
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The TV will feature all of LG’s current bells and whistles, including smart TV with streaming and social media, the new Magic Motion remote with “four modes,” including a built-in mic, and passive 3D. The last feature is a surprise, as OLED is arguably more akin to plasma than LCD–it doesn’t require a backlight–and LG’s 2012 plasmas feature active 3D technology.

As the EM9600 is LG’s flagship TV for 2012, design is obviously paramount, and at only 4mm thick, the “virtually bezel-less” TV appears to deliver. A company representative we spoke with couldn’t confirm bezel width by press time, but other reports cause us to suspect a bezel width of just 1mm. As for depth, the TV is so shallow, it includes a separate control box to house connectivity and other necessaries, connected to the panel by a proprietary cable. The EM9600 takes the “all screen” aesthetic to a new level.

But it’s not just about looking good; a TV has to perform as well. LG says the TV uses a proprietary algorithm designed to improve and refine hues and tones when viewed from a wide angle. According to LG, other OLED TVs “exhibit drastic changes in hues from different viewing angles and abnormal color gamut.”

The 55-inch LG EM9600 OLED is due to be released in the second half of the 2012, with September as the likely launch month. Look forward to more details and pricing then.

Google Chrome Book: An Air Rip Off?

January 12, 2012 By DJ Yoshi 1 Comment

Remind you of something that Apple has released?

– via cNet – LAS VEGAS
The Google Chromebook will live on with a fresh chip upgrade, according to Samsung.
The next-gen Samsung Series 5 Chromebook gains a dual-core Intel Celeron processor and loses the slower Atom silicon, a Samsung representative on the CES show floor told CNET.
Other specs (see photo below) remain pretty much the same, including a 16GB solid-state drive.

Chromebooks aspire to run apps, documents, and settings in the cloud and thereby simplify the overall user experience. In practice, however, reviewers have found that cloud-based computing can be frustrating if the wireless connection is unreliable.
For that, and other reasons, the Chromebook has not sold in numbers comparable to mainstream Windows laptops.
The Series 5 is slated for release in the second quarter. Pricing has not been announced.

*Personally, it’s nice and all, but doesn’t it look a little too much like a Macbook Air…without the speed?

BlackBerry QNX OS Controlling Your Car’s Dashboard

January 11, 2012 By DJ Yoshi Leave a Comment

Porsche Fully Equipped w/ BlackBerry QNX

No Touch Sync, internet Connectivity, Cross-Platform Applications… all at the touch of a button or sound of your voice! Research in Motion’s BlackBerry QNX Operating System steps its game up to be the next generation OS that can control your car!

As the cars of tomorrow gain Internet connections and applications, they’ll need infotainment software that allows them to be as flexible and easily updated as your average smartphone. RIM subsidiary QNX Software Systems Limited thinks that the solution to that problem lies in the HTML5 framework and is showcasing its new HTML5-based QNX CAR 2 application platform at CES 2012.

Designed to be easily reskinned and customized by automotive OEMs, QNX CAR 2 operating system allows automakers to quickly and inexpensively develop and implement HTML5 applications and services for their vehicles’ infotainment system. Likewise, CAR 2 supports Qt, OpenGL ES, and other user interface technologies and rolls in other QNX technologies, including the Neutrino real-time operating system, a multimedia framework, and an acoustic processing library for hands-free systems, hopefully blending each of these technologies in one, seamless user experience

The Porsche Carrera that QNX will be displaying at the BlackBerry booth is a proof of concept for the new platform. It will be powered by the QNX CAR 2 platform and cloud-connected via a smartphone–presumably a BlackBerry model. Near Field Communication (NFC) combines with Bluetooth connectivity for hassle-free pairing of the aforementioned smartphone. Once connected, the system can take advantage of QNX’s ultra HD voice technology, which provides 48KHz full stereo bandwidth for clearer, easier-to-understand hands-free calls.

QNX’s CAR 2 application platform already boasts the support of a variety of software and hardware companies, including TeleCommunication Systems, Texas Instruments, Vlingo, and Audi–which already uses QNX technology in its current infotainment systems. App partners demonstrating software on the concept Porsche include Poynt virtual personal assistant, Weather Network, and streaming Internet radio from Pandora, NoBex, Slacker, and TuneIn.

Mercedes: Adding Facebook & Google to Its Dashboard

January 11, 2012 By DJ Yoshi Leave a Comment

Stay Connected In Your Benz

– via PC Magazine – LAS VEGAS
Mercedes-Benz on Tuesday expanded its in-vehicle Internet offerings by incoporating services like Facebook, Yelp, and Google into the dashboard via a service dubbed mbrace2.
“It works seamlessly, automatically, and 24-7. I admit that [it] won’t change the world, but it is a very real improvement in terms of independence,” Dr. Dieter Zetsche, head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, said in a keynote speech here at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Powered by Hughes Telematics, mbrace2 is the second-generation of Mercedes-Benz’s cloud-based services. Updates will be provided over-the-air, and mbrace2 works with iOS and Android devices. With it, you can check your Facebook updates, get information from Google, hear about the latest news, and tap into services provided by a real-time concierge service.
Mbrace 2 launches with the MY13 SL-Class (click below) in the spring and will be standard in most MY13 passenger vehicles.
New Mercedes SL
Given that many car manufacturers have already incorporated apps like Facebook into their vehicles, Zetsche acknowledged that “seamless access is nice, but … that’s just what keeps you in the game today.”
“We want to be ahead of it,” he said. “In fact, our customers expect nothing less. That’s why chapter two in our delcaration of independence is freedom of speech. More precisely, the freedom of not just talking to your car, but by being understood by it.”
To that end, Mercedes showed off a concept known as Dynamic & Intuitive Control Experience (DICE). In a video demo, a driver is seen kicking back in a spaceship-like vehicle, with information about surrounding locations shown on the windshield. Information is accessed by tapping the dashboard.

Myspace TV

January 11, 2012 By DJ Yoshi Leave a Comment

Myspace is Back… w/ Justin Timberlake

– via PC Mag – LAS VEGAS
MySpace was the biggest social network of…several years ago. Since then it has gone into a long, slow decline and has changed hands and been generally ignored in favor of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking services. Panasonic has announced at CES 2012 that it is stepping in to bring MySpace back to the forefront of online socializing with a new MySpace service that isn’t about social networking; instead, MySpace is being reinvented as social television viewing.
Myspace is starting by dropping the second capital (and underlining the “space” part of its logo), rebranding MySpace from a social network web site to a way to watch TV with friends. The new service is called Myspace TV, and it will work with Panasonic HDTVs as part of Viera Connect.
Myspace CEO Tim Vanderhook and co-owner Justin Timberlake (yes, the singer/actor) showed up at the Panasonic press conference on Monday to announce Myspace TV. The two purchased MySpace from NewsCorp earlier this year, in one of the stranger sales/merger stories of the year.
CES 2012The service will focus on music at first, with music channels on Myspace TV using the company’s rights to 100,000 music videos and 42,000,000 songs. Users will be able to watch/listen to these songs and comment on what they think about them simultaneously, creating an audience experience. It will be expanded to television and movies, with additional channels featuring news, sports, and reality TV.
A Myspace TV app will be released on tablets and smartphones, serving as a companion to the Viera Connect app and letting users sync their content. It will still require a Panasonic HDTV with Viera Connect for use. Panasonic and Myspace will launch Myspace TV in the first half of 2012.

Acer Aspire: World’s Thinnest Notebook

January 11, 2012 By DJ Yoshi Leave a Comment

Move over Mac Air. Acer Came to Play

– via engadget –
Acer brought it’s A-game to CES, by which we mean the “world’s thinnest Ultrabook.” The 13.3-inch Acer Aspire S5 just launched and we got our mitts all-over its super-svelte magnesium and aluminum exterior. We’ve got some photos in the gallery below, with more to come — people are literally elbowing each other in the gut to get shots of this thing.

Even for a hands-on, this is going to be brief, owing to the fact that the demo area at Acer’s press conference is swarmed with photographers and journalists. (Nothing like the world’s thinnest Ultrabook to set off a shoving match!) In any case, a few minutes was enough for us to suspect that while the S5 improves on a few of the S3’s shortcomings, it might be giving us an encore of some of its flaws.

Starting with the design, this has the same lovely brushed metal lid as its older brother, except this time the interior feels just as premium as what’s on the outside. You won’t find any plastic here, save for the keys: the bottom side and palm rest feel as rock-solid and throughout it seems fairly immune to fingerprints (and nothing like a bunch of pawing bloggers to put that to the test!). When yours truly wrested control of the S5 and held it in one hand, there wasn’t a hint of bend or flex, so we have high hopes for overall build quality.

It’s also impossible not to notice that Acer’s whittled down the chassis — something that should be obvious when you pick it up for the first time, or even look at photos of it. Still, the drop-down compartment on the bottom housing the ports juts out near the hinge, creating a mild, but unsightly bulge. Not a deal-breaker, but it does seem to undermine Acer’s claim to world’s thinnest.

Now here’s where Acer hasn’t learned from its previous follies. The keys have the same scratchy feel as what you’ll find on the S3 or even the new mid-range Timeline Ultra laptops. More importantly, though, they’re shallow. There’s very little travel here — so little that you might feel your hands tense up slightly as you concentrate on hitting buttons hard enough so that your presses register. We also noticed that a handful of major keys remain woefully undersized (a common problem on 13-inch Ultrabooks), though the Enter key is amply sized.

So there you have it. That’s about all we can say right now in good conscience, since our time with the S5 was so limited. As always, we’ll reserve judgment until we can get one in to review, but for now we feel comfortable saying that this guys feels awfully… familiar.