Pioneer’s 2008 Kuro Line: Thinner Blacker Plasmas and an LCOS Projector But No LCDs [Home Entertainment]

Today Pioneer is revealing its official 2008 Kuro TV lineup for the US. As we expected from European announcements, it includes second-generation Kuro plasmas—thinner, with five-times-deeper black levels than the first critically acclaimed Kuro plasma—and a Kuro-branded LCOS projector originally developed by JVC. What’s missing here are the smaller-sized Kuro LCDs that Pioneer is offering European flat-panel shoppers. Here’s the full product rundown, plus the reason for the missing LCD piece of the puzzle:

More Kuro Than Kuro
On the plasma front, Pioneer’s new Kuros fit midway on the contrast gamut between the previous generation and the “Extreme Contrast” panel shown at CES. The five-times-deeper blacks don’t show up on the brightly lit sales floor as well as they do in a dimly lit home, but Pioneer’s Russ Johnson says they will blow away videophiles, particularly with respect to color purity and gradations of shadow. The idea is that you will see more without colors being blown out, and without “hotspots” that make whites too bright. There will be two 1080p plasma TVs out next month, the 50″ PDP-5020FD for $4,000 and the 60″ PDP-6020FD for $5,500. They’re both about 20% thinner than the previous Kuro models, now measuring 3.7″ thick. Besides the features that it shares with the previous generation, these Kuros have a new remote control and new HD GUI for better ease-of-use. We’re also told they have some networking capabilities—Home Media Gallery plus DLNA compatibility with PCs and other network devices. More on that when we check them out.In the Elite line, Pioneer is rolling out souped-up versions of the above TVs at $1,000 premiums—the 50″ PRO-111FD and 60″ PRO-151FD. The bigger news from a gadget perspective is that there will be two plasma monitors that are even thinner. They will be 50% as thick as the original Kuro, measuring just 2.5″. As monitors, there have no ATSC tuners or speakers, but they will be highly customizable thanks to some serious connectivity and remote access tools. It’s a rich man’s product, for sure, but worth knowing it’s hitting the market, since the tech will eventually trickle down.That Projector Rings a Bell
As for the KRF-9000FD projector that snuck out at the European launch, some were smart enough to spot it as a re-branded JVC RS2 or HD100, the two so similar they’re referred to as “twins”. Johnson tells us that the company chose the LCOS projector because its performance was “consistent with the deep black levels” of the Kuro line. Pioneer added some tuning options to jive with Kuro deep-black benchmarks, but at this time the company did not do too much to make it a product distinct from JVC’s. It will be branded simply as the Pioneer Elite Kuro Projector, and it will sell for $9,000, as early as June via the Elite dealer network.

Why No LCDs???
Johnson was good enough to shed some light on the missing LCDs. It turns out, Pioneer Europe has a different LCD supplier than Pioneer USA. Pioneer’s European supplier—Philips?—has Pioneer’s global LCD partner—Sharp—supplies different product to Europe than it does to the US. Sharp supplies 1080p LCDs in 32″, 37″ and 46″ sizes with 100Hz frame mode to Pioneer Europe, but can’t bring them to the US—even for itself. Of course in the US, it would be 120Hz, not 100Hz, a PAL spec. Those are the baseline requirements for Pioneer to work its Kuro magic. These requirements can’t be met by the US LCD affiliate, says Johnson, “not even in their own line-up”, but he does expect them to come eventually. Since Philips is no longer in the US TV biz, and since Sharp appears to be Pioneer’s other LCD partner, I guess we’ll have to wait until Sharp catches up.

That Kuro Secret Sauce
All this hullabaloo about Pioneer quitting panel manufacturing and instead buying panels from Panasonic made us ask Johnson exactly how Kuro will stay alive, and he surprised us with some factoids:
• The second-gen Kuros gets the 5X deeper black with the same panel, plus better filtering and video processing.
• Even the “Extreme Contrast” CES panel, the one that freaked us out, was based on “current glass,” and not some futuristic laboratory panel. “It’s how you fire the pixel,” says Johnson. We don’t know exactly what that means, but it’s strangely reassuring. [Pioneer USA]

Share This

The New Yorker on Simultaneous Invention and the Intellectual Ventures Laboratories [Pulp-bite]

Malcolm Gladwell (smart guy, puffy hair) has a feature in this week’s
The New Yorker about the history of simultaneous invention, the best example being Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray both patenting the telephone on the same day. There are many other examples, leading to the conclusion that “scientific discoveries must, in some sense, be inevitable. They must be in the air, products of the intellectual climate of a specific time and place.” The story is put into modern perspective by including scenes drawn from meetings of members of the company called Intellectual Ventures. The founding member, Nathan Myhrvold, also founded Microsoft’s R&D labs. His idea for IV was to see if “the kind of insight that leads to invention could be engineered.” The whole point being the creation of powerful ideas. Bill Gates, who works with them on H.I.V prevention, is quoted:

Bill Gates, whose company, Microsoft, is one of the major investors in Intellectual Ventures, says, “I can give you fifty examples of ideas they’ve had where, if you take just one of them, you’d have a startup company right there.” Gates has participated in a number of invention sessions, and, with other members of the Gates Foundation, meets every few months with Myhrvold to brainstorm about things like malaria or H.I.V. “Nathan sent over a hundred scientific papers beforehand,” Gates said of the last such meeting. “The amount of reading was huge. But it was fantastic. There’s this idea they have where you can track moving things by counting wing beats. So you could build a mosquito fence and clear an entire area. They had some ideas about super-thermoses, so you wouldn’t need refrigerators for certain things. They also came up with this idea to stop hurricanes. Basically, the waves in the ocean have energy, and you use that to lower the temperature differential. I’m not saying it necessarily is going to work. But it’s just an example of something where you go, Wow.”

Worth reading, if you’ve got a bus ride in your near future. [The New Yorker]

Share This

HTC Touch Diamond hands-on

Filed under: Announcements, Cellphones

We had a little thumb-print orgy with the new HTC Touch Diamond immediately following its launch. Light and small, the Touch Diamond comes off as a unit with promise. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait a while to get our hands on this via a US carrier, but Orange users in the UK will no doubt be pretty happy with this new handset, the first of its kind to use Windows Mobile 6.1.

Check out the gallery below, complete with comments and interface walk-through. A couple vids after the break, too!

Continue reading HTC Touch Diamond hands-on

Permalink

Share This

Unlocked iPhones Putting Gadget Activation Company Out of Business [IPhone]

Hey, you there, with the unlocked iPhone. I bet you’re feeling pretty good about it, satisfied you’re totally getting over on the Death Star. But have you ever thought about the little(r) guy, the outside contractors doing the flooring, you might be screwing over? Cause you are. Synchronoss makes the activation magic happen for the iPhone, as well as a lot of other gadgets. But the millions of unlocked iPhones floating around—a trend they expect to get worse—is costing them a quarter of their revenue, nearly $30 million. That bit of news today nuked their stock value by 44 percent, meaning you guys are basically killing the company. Do you feel so righteous now? Oh, okay. [Alley Insider]

Share This

Windows XP SP3 hits Windows Update, Vista SP1 makes a comeback

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

At last the moment you’ve been waiting for. Microsoft wants to hit your version of Windows with an update, and this time you don’t have to go rummaging around the internet to find it: just fire up Windows Update and let Microsoft do all the work. After a few false starts XP users get the much-anticipated SP3 update, which promises speed boosts and some of the fancy security features found in Vista. If you’re a Vista user you’re also in luck, since Microsoft has restarted its Vista SP1 distribution after some compatibility problems with Microsoft Dynamics RMS. Sounds like a party.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Palm Zeppelin and Skywriter Phones Coming in 2008? [Palm]

Smartphone blog TamsPPC say they received an email from Palm regarding developer submissions for two devices codenamed Zeppelin and Skywriter.They suggest the Skywriter could be a Palm 500-style device with WinMo 6.1, and they posted possible mockup of what appears to be a dev unit. There were no facts provided about the Zeppelin, but TamsPPC included a copy of the email they received and think the phones will hit the market in Q3 2008. Hmmmm… [TamsPPC]

Share This

Panasonic’s DMP-BD50 Their First BD-Live Blu-ray Player [Blu-Ray]

Today in NYC, Panasonic showed off its DMP-BD50, the company’s first BD-Live Blu-ray 2.0 player—and the second in the market besides the PlayStation 3—setting the price at $700. It’s an improvement over the DMP-BD30, which will stay on the market as a $500 step-down. In addition to BD-Live (and the requisite Ethernet port), it will decode all new DTS and Dolby Digital codecs internally, as well as bitstream them to a compatible receiver, if that’s your preference. The player, initially announced at CES, will ship in “late spring,” presumably the next 4-6 weeks, and will not need a firmware upgrade to be 2.0 compatible—a requirement of the $400 Sony BDP-S350 player due out around the same time. Fact sheet after the jump.

BLU-RAY DISC PLAYER DMP-BD50 FACT SHEET

BD-Live
The DMP-BD50’s Ethernet terminal is a gateway for Internet connection, which paves the way to an entirely new form of movie-plus-Internet entertainment. In the future, BD-Live users will be able to participate in quizzes and challenge each other to interactive games that are linked to bonus movie content on BD discs. BD-Live also supports other interactive functions, such as Picture-in-Picture and Audio Mixing.

Interactive Functions
Picture-In-Picture
With Picture-in-Picture, a small sub-window is displayed over the main image. There are four examples of Picture-in-Picture modes, each offering distinct functions. They include Enhanced Commentary, Backstage Pass Function, Peek Behind The Animation and Audio Mixing.

Enhanced Commentary*
BD media goes considerably beyond the kind of audio commentary provided in many DVD movies, such as a director discussing the film. Enhanced Commentary makes it possible, for example, for the director or actors to appear in the sub-window (as if they are standing in front of the screen) and point to actors or equipment as they make their comments.

Backstage Pass Function*
This lets you access additional information provided about people, places or things in a BD movie. Use the remote control to select an element highlighted on the screen, and a sub-window opens with the information. For example, there could be notes about the clothing or accessories an actor is wearing or the restaurant in which a scene is set.

Peek Behind The Animation*
While playing back a movie with dubbed-in voices - for example, a feature-length animation - this feature lets you watch in a sub-window as the actors read their parts. You can see the actors’ gestures and expressions as they speak, giving you an inside look at a whole facet of moviemaking you’ve never seen before.

Audio Mixing*
The Audio Mixing function lets you choose which soundtrack to listen to: the one from the content playing in the main window, the one from the sub-window, or both at the same time. The sub-window soundtrack can also be reproduced in 5.1-channel surround sound.

*Depending upon program contents.

Other BD-Live Possibilities
The future is expected to bring a host of imaginative new features. For example, the DMP-BD50 will be able to connect directly to the Internet and download additional content from Websites to an SD Memory Card for more viewing and playing enjoyment.

HIGH-DEFINITION PICTURE AND SOUND QUALITY
UniPhier®
Combining a PHL Reference Chroma Processor with advanced P4HD imaging technology, Uniphier, the Precise Digital Video processor reproduces crisp, natural colors that are extremely faithful to the original movie. The beautiful images are complemented by an exceptionally pure, accurate sound achieved through Audio Re-master and other leading-edge audio technologies. Uniphier reflects the advanced encoding and authoring technologies developed by Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory (PHL) in collaboration with film industry professionals. With Uniphier at its heart, the DMP-BD50 provides a level of image and sound quality that meets Hollywood’s stringent demands - so you experience movies just the way they were meant to be experienced.

Precise Digital Video
PHL Reference Chroma Processor
The PHL Reference Chroma Processor up-samples (4:2:0 to 4:2:2) the color information in decoded video signals. Using proprietary Panasonic technology, this innovative circuit faithfully reproduces the fine details and nuances of Blu-ray video streams that have been recorded with high quality image compression system. It generates images with all the clarity and depth that BD-Video movies have to offer.

P4HD (Pixel Precision Progressive Processing for HD)
To get the best HD images from a BD-Video disc, you need a player that renders high-quality progressive images, expresses motion smoothly, and draws sharp diagonal lines. The DMP-BD50’s P4HD processes more than 15 billion pixels per second and applies the optimum processing to every pixel in the video data on the disc. The result is images with exceptional resolution.

Deep Color*
The DMP-BD50’s HDMI output is Deep Color compatible. While the earlier HDMI V.1.2 offers 8-bit, 256-step gradation on 4:4:4, HDMI V.1.3 enables video signals to be sent on 12-bit, 4,096-step gradation at any format. This helps the DMP-BD50 reproduce natural looking colors with smooth gradation and minimal color banding.
*An HDMI™ V.1.3 compatible TV is required.

1080/24p Playback
The DMP-BD50 provides 1080/24p output (via HDMI) for Blu-ray titles and DVD titles. It reproduces movie images from a Blu-ray Disc in their original 24p form, with no need for conversion.

HD Audio Format Decoding and Output
The DMP-BD50 is equipped with decoders for the high-quality, lossless Dolby® TrueHD and DDTS-HD Master Audio™ audio formats. These formats theoretically contain the information to reproduce original sound sources in their entirety. Connection to an AV amplifier with 7.1-channel input capability enables sound quality on the level of a studio master system.

Audio Re-master for All Media
The DMP-BD50’s Audio Re-master function compensates for data lost in the compression process used in BD and DVD recording. This helps create a fuller, richer sound that is extremely faithful to the original. It also brings re-mastering to the Blu-ray Disc for the first time ever.

HD Networking with SD Memory Card
The DMP-BD50 comes equipped with a slot for SD Memory Cards. Just take the SD Memory Card from your HD camcorder or digital still camera, and you’re ready to view high resolution photos and motion images on your TV.

Linking with an HD Camcorder
The DMP-BD50 can play back AVCHD-format images shot with an HD camcorder, such as the Panasonic HDC-SD9. Images recorded onto the camcorder’s SD Memory Card are output directly from the DMP-BD50’s HDMI terminal in their original, high-quality 1920 x 1080 resolution. The DMP-BD50 also provides an AVCHD Direct Navigator function that makes it easy to search for particular scenes.

Linking with a Digital Camera
The DMP-BD50 can play back JPEG still images on an SD Memory Card, such as those recorded with a Lumix FZ3 digital camera. The DMP-BD50 can output the images to 1920 x 1080 resolution - ideal for a full-HD TV - and output them via the HDMI terminal*. Using the Slideshow playback feature, you can play a music CD at the same time you’re showing the photos, so viewers enjoy both beautiful images and their favorite music.

VIERA LinkTM
Seamless GUI
You Can Control Your Blu-ray Disc™ Player with the TV Remote Control*
When the TV is on, the VIERA Link function lets you switch to home theater mode using just the Panasonic VIERA TV’s remote control unit. Simply press the VIERA Link button on the TV’s remote control and select “BD Player” on the VIERA Link Menu screen. The BD player’s menu will display on the TV screen, and you can begin playback of a Blu-ray Disc or select from the Blu-ray disc menu.
*VIERA LinkTM is a new name for EZ SyncTM.
*Not All 2008 VIERA Link features are compatible with all 2006/2007 EZ SyncTM products.

BD Global Website
http://panasonic.net/blu-ray/

Share This

Eee 900 now available for pre-order for delivery May 12

Filed under: Laptops

We already knew a few delivery dates for the Eee 900 worldwide, but ASUS came real with the Stateside deets today, so if you’re in the market, get ready for some unboxing fun on May 12th. A plethora of online retailers should be taking your $549 pre-orders soon, including Amazon, Buy.com, Newegg, PC Mall, and Costco, and several brick-and-mortar retailers will also get stock on the 12th as well. Other than that, it’s the same Eee 900 we’ve been seeing for a while now — we’re just waiting for that black one to hit.

Read | Permalink |