Posted Jan 29th 2008 9:07PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment
If Mitsubishi’s polite pair of projectors weren’t enough to satisfy those impeccably high standards of yours, we’ve all ideas that Planar’s duo won’t let you down. First spotted at Runco / Planar’s zanily themed booth at CEDIA, it seems that Planar is just now getting around to giving us a ship date that we can dutifully pencil in. The flagship PD8150 — which checks in with a glorious 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, 1,000 ANSI lumens and a 15,000:1 contrast ratio — will finally ship in early March for $7,999. As for the $5,999 PD8130, which also hits the road in March, you can expect the same resolution with a slightly lower 10,000:1 contrast ratio. Pretty tempting, no?

[Via AboutProjectors]

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Everex had both officially unveiled and delayed the launch of their Cloudbook all within the past month. Officially being unveiled during CES 2008, it was all set for a January 25, 2008 release, except that day came and went. Everex did respond to the delay, but sadly the delay announcement was not made until the morning of the supposed release date. In our opinion not a good time to make an announcement like that.

Now with the good news, those that were ready to part with their $399 and grab a Cloudbook should be able to do so soon. Everex has updated their site with a new release date of February 15, 2008, which is just about 16 days later than originally planned. All-in-all not that bad of a delay, that is assuming it actually hits the stores and does not see another push back.

Read [Everex]

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In what seems like a last ditch effort, Toshiba has purchased a 30-second ad spot during the Superbowl to help spread the word on HD DVD. A pretty bold move considering the ad comes at a cost of $2.7 million. The commercial is an attempt to spread the word on their recent decision to cut the prices on their HD DVD players and hopefully get some more people buying.

This past week sales for Blu-ray player purchases rose from 15,257 to 21,770 while HD DVD players did the exact opposite. They dropped, and dropped big time with sales going from a respectable 14,558 to a lowly 1,758.

I think its time, lets just pronounce Blu-ray the winner and move on.

Via [Wired]

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Have you ever wanted to post something about a favorite restaurant or shop in one of those city guides where users contribute content, but you’re too busy to sit and write out a detailed review? Meet PlaceShout, a site for snappy user reviews that’s perfect for our attention deficit culture. Organized by city, you can contribute your own two cents (in this case, exactly 100 characters, no more) about your favorite restaurant, club, park, shop, farmer’s market, whatever, as well as look up places that you think might have been mentioned by someone else. If you agree with the contributer’s comments (”best fried chicken in the world,” for instance), you can click “agree” under that item in Digg-like fashion.

I’m not a big user of Twitter (I don’t know why anyone would care what I’m doing right now), but I can seeing logging into PlaceShout on my iPhone when I find a great restaurant or shop I want to share. What I’d like to see is Twitter crossed with PlaceShout so you can get updates from your network of friends when they’re in interesting, fun places.

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Looks like Japan isn’t only the Land of the Rising Sun, but it ought to be dubbed the Land of the Many Cell Phones as well. Nokia is tipped to release its dual-slider handset known as X02NK soon. This smartphone will come with a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus, a Carl Zeiss lens, Nokia Maps support, GPS navigation, and rather lengthy talk times (160 minutes in WCDMA mode and 240 minutes in GSM mode). There is no word on pricing, but the Nokia X02NK will be available this April in a choice of red, storm blue and white colors. Guess this is one of those rare moments where Japan gets a handset later than the rest of the world - it is actually a Nokia N95 if you look closer.

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An often posed question to those in the know is: “What CPU should I buy?” and that’s followed pretty closely by, “…and which graphics chip?” To quiet the mob, YouGamers has lists of graphics chips and CPUs essentially ranked by, “value.” I put value in quotes as the dollar figures are obvious, but the comparison of graphics chips by 3DMark score, and CPUs by CPU Marks is not any sort of performance guarantee, but it can serve as a useful guideline or starting point if it’s time to buy and you just haven’t been paying attention for a while.

If not taken with a grain of salt to begin with, the guide could be fairly controversial, but taken for what it’s worth, I see some value in the statistics. It’s too bad there aren’t lists of motherboards and graphics cards with similar rankings as I myself find that choice often the most complex and time consuming.

For what it’s worth, the current top value graphics chip (as measured) is the GeForce 8600 GT, and for CPUs, you get Intel Q6600 for quad-core, AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ for dual-core and AMD Athlon 64 3500+ for single core. An odd trend is that you get the most bang for sub-US$50 processors. Most of the time I end up going for a $100-$200 chip that is the low end of a new architecture in hopes that I will someday upgrade with a cheap plug-in in the future. Since I usually end up just buying a new motherboard/CPU combo, perhaps I should be feeding closer to the bottom as well.

Read more at YouGamers, via TechReport.

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Our favorite Japanese pseudo-citizen at Kotaku turns up some indsider verbiage on that hot hot black-and-blue sex machine of a DS Lite that Circuit City pre-emptively had up for pre-order. The warehouse just started slapping the clamshells together, which in person, says the source, looks more “purplish blue” and “awesome.”

It is, in fact, the same unit as the red and black DS Lite. Given that it takes something like two to four weeks after packing to hit shelves, Bashcraft suggests mid-to-late Feb. for D-Day. I so wish I didn’t already have a black one, which is already a slab of aesthetic satisfaction. [Kotaku]

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So how often have you found yourself looking at porn playing Solitaire at work, only to have your boss bust in on you? Well, when you suddenly start clicking like a madman, it’s usually pretty obvious that you weren’t actually working. If you’re really that bored at work on a regular basis, you might consider investing in a new mouse.

How exactly is a mouse going to help you out? Well, most mice really wouldn’t do much, however, this little guy has a special red button that could save your job. When the “Phantom button” is clicked, one of two things will happen, depending on how you have it set up. You can either have it minimize all programs, or you can have it bring a particular program to the front of your screen. Personally, I’d have it do the latter.

The price for this piece of mind is only $24 (from Japan). Then again, you could always consider getting a job where you weren’t bored to death every day. You know, whatever is convenient.

Source: NewLaunches

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Shaking a phone to read text messages is as intuitive as swiping your finger across the screen to unlock it, but once you’re trained it becomes second nature. In this case, ShakeSMS is an app for Nokia phones that let you jostle your phone to view an incoming SMS. Jigger it again to go back to the home screen. That’s pretty much all the app does, but it does it well. [ShakeSMS via Phonemag]

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Hamburg’s proposed 250,000 square-foot Science Center is a beautiful ring of pixilated modules, a huge censored donut from outer space.

When the real thing is built—the press release offers no timeframe—it’ll house a theater, offices, labs and shops. For now, however, there are only mockups. Rendered beneath overcast skies, the scene gives the  a stark, mystical quality, like something lurking in the background of a mood shot in a near-future sci-fi flick.

OMA [via Dezeen and Gizmodo]

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