Home Entertainment
Unity Home Theater System is a home theater in a TV stand
Thanks to their simplicity, the home theater in a box (HTIB) has become a popular addition to the TV cabinet in many households. Looking to simplify things even further, California-based company in2technologies has unveiled its aptly named Unity Home Theater System at CES 2012 that unifies a HTIB with a TV stand. So instead of a tangle of cables snaking their way from the back of a TV stand to the TV, the Unity cleans things up with a single HDMI 1.4a cable. Read More
Larger screen OLED TVs have had us salivating at various electronics trade shows over the last couple of years and CES 2012 doesn't look like being any different. LG already announced it's intention to show a 55-inch OLED display in the lead up to the world's biggest consumer electronics show and now rival Samsung has unveiled its offering that has set our salivary glands into overdrive. Featuring the same 55-inch screen size as LG's unit, Samsung's Super OLED TV boasts the same eye-popping picture quality, super fast response times and ultra-thin form factor that is the hallmark of OLED technology. Read More
Griffin Technology has given visitors to CES 2012 a quick preview of a new audio amplifier that uses Apple's Airport Express to offer untethered digital playback from iTunes through existing non-powered speakers. The low profile amp captures streaming audio from any AirPlay-enabled source, decodes it and then sends the lossless, amplified sound through the speakers. Read More
Now you don't necessarily need to own a “Smart TV” in order to get Android apps on your television. Always Innovating will be showing off its HDMI dongle at CES this week, a compact device that can turn any HDTV into a Smart TV. Essentially Always Innovating's HDMI Dongle is a portable version of a set-top box. The device is based on the Texas Instruments Cortex-A9 OMAP 4 ,which can run from 1GHz to 1.8GHz depending of the configuration, and offers 1GB of RAM as well as a micro SD card for local storage. Read More
Each January the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the venue for consumer electronics companies to unveil their upcoming goods as well as some milestone products. This year LG Electronics plans to show the world's largest OLED TV - a 55-inch display that's just 4 mm thin and weighs a mere 7.5 kg. Read More
Sony creates holodeck using Playstation Move and Eyetoy
When Sony wanted to highlight the immersiveness of movies available on the Playstation Store, they turned to UK-based agencies Studio Output and Marshmallow Laser Feast to create a series of shorts around the theme "great films fill rooms." Using the Playstation Move, the production team shot a handful of scenes depicting an ordinary man going from his couch to flying above skyscrapers as a robot and fighting sea monsters. The best part: not a single aspect of these videos was added in the editing room. Read More
With the advantage of no cables running around the corners of a room and the ability to play music from people’s ever-expanding digital music libraries, wireless speakers have become increasingly popular over recent years. So it’s not surprising to see Copenhagen-based company Libratone enter the U.S. market with a couple of AirPlay-enabled speaker systems that can stream audio from iTunes libraries on a Mac or PC, as well as music stored on an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Read More
Releasing scents during the projection of a film reportedly predates the introduction of sound. One early attempt at "Smell-O-Vision" involved a wad of cotton soaked in rose oil being placed in front of an electric fan during a newsreel in 1906, but despite such experiments, this is one technology that just hasn't taken off ... although the quest to add an extra olfactory experience to movies and, more recently, video games continues. This latest effort comes from French company Olf-Action which has created SMELLIT - a device designed to bring an aromatic dimension to your video game and movie experiences. Read More
The tiny Redbox kiosks are sprouting up everywhere, but is the company planning on firing its next shot at Netflix? Its first shot was directly responsible for crippling Blockbuster. Now, it's offering unlimited movie streaming for less than four dollars a month. Read More
iTree could be the world's largest iPhone dock
While you might be tempted to think the Wall of Sound is one of the biggest music player docks you've ever seen, it doesn't quite live up to the huge proportional potential of the iTree iPhone and iPod docking station from Austrian design house KMKG STUDIO. The dock is carved from a simple tree trunk, its rear-mounted speakers are pointed towards a wall to reflect the audio and the wood serves to resonate the sound in a similar fashion to a piano or violin. Read More