There is still some news left from the last CES. In this case, a HDTV display that doubles the color spectrum, compared to what current LCD or plasma monitors offer.

Maybe you will be disappointed to hear that only the 65'' model was shown, but don't worry, if you want them bigger, Mitsubishi will deliver. Laser TVs don't look to be size limited, as other emerging technologies are (yes, I'm talking about OLED screens). The closest relative we can think of to laser TV is, probably, DLP TV. Some of you will have a nice DLP projector, but bringing the technology to TVs is taking its time, and they say from what's been seen at CES that this technology has grown a lot.

Laser TVs are expected to be available sometime in 2008.

If you have a digital camera, either a photographic or a video camera, you will be familiar with the very small LCD displays. What none of the displays have is a SVGA resolution. In fact, even the biggest LCDs with a, let's say, two or three inches long diagonal, don't reach the magic half megapixel.

At the CES, among so many monitors of gigantic proportions, Kopin showed a really tiny display that, nevertheless, had enough resolution to be called SVGA: 800 x 600 pixels.

According to the company's president, this miniature will only eat 70mW of power and will reduce the size of it's predecessor by 45%.

Link: AnandTech.

Last week, in Las Vegas, a new edition of the CES took place. Among the many products that were shown there, one was already confirmed by LG, even before it started: a 52-inches multi-touch LCD screen.

The immediate question that comes to mind is: what's the difference between a multi-touch screen and a regular touchpanel? The conventional one only accepts one input at a time, while the "multi-touch" admits more than one simultaneous input. To this end, Philips has equipped this monitor with an infrared image sensor.

It will have a resolution of 1.920 x 1.080 pixels, which places it right there in the "full HD" category.

Link: PC World.

SHOGO is the first touch screen WiFi lifestyle digital picture frame designed to receive, view and share digital pictures with friends and family around the world. All without a PC.

With its wireless Internet/WiFi connection and integrated battery plus 1 Gb of built-in memory, the neat looking screen allows lots of photos to be displayed in their original 4:3 format. The auto rotate function automatically adjusts photos and menus in either portrait or landscape position. Thanks to the built in WiFi support, the tricks don't stop there. The SHOGO can do show weather forecasts, listen to Internet radios and allsorts of nifty digital content freeing.

Every Shogo frame is easily managed from the free myshogo.com portal, an internet-based portal that is fully integrated with major photo portal sites such as Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug and .Mac. From an industry perspective, myshogo.com is a fully functional Internet-based content provisioning service that provides back end web-based services that automatically “update” each frame with pictures and other digital content such as weather forecasts and RSS feeds. From the user’s perspective, it’s like magic: with myshogo.com, you can manage your mother or grandmother’s Shogo frame remotely. And with the “Shogo Friend” capability, you can share your favorite shots from your Shogo, instantly and with one or multiple friends without a PC.

Specifications for the SG 080 include a 8'' 800x600 TFT LCD display capable of displaying 32.000 colors (16 bit), touch screen navigation, integrated battery for cordless operation, integrated memory card reader: SD/MS/MMC/xD/SDHC, RF remote control, WiFi 802.11 B/G / Ethernet / USB 1.1 and mini USB, stereo audio and audio out jack and dimensions of 200 x 160 x 32mm.

In a recent article, BeHardware has investigated a problem reported by their forum users concerning the quality of some LCD monitors:

"Readers started complaining of darker zones on their screens and imperfect color homogeneity. More specifically, unified images were darker in the upper area of the screen than on the lower area."

After some thinking, no sort amount of research and several conversations with manufacturers, they came to the conclusion that the root of the problem lays in the Film added to TN screens in order to get a wider viewing angle:

"[...] due to economical reasons [some] panel manufacturers have put poor quality films on certain more economical panels. This can result in serious problems in light diffraction."

The manufacturers spotted so far are Samsung and AU Optronics. MVA, PVA, ASV and IPS panels are not affected by this anomaly because they don't use this film.

On December 1, in Japan,  Sony Corp will launch an ultra-thin (3 mm) flat TV based on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology. The new 11-inch TV will cost 200,000 yen ($1,740) but even at that price Sony will probably lose money. The rest of the world will have to wait for this new technology.

What's so special about OLED screens that someone would be willing to spend so much no matter what size limitations they currently face? OLED panels offer crisp pictures and are supposed to deal with fast-moving images better than LCDs, they are energy efficient and make thin and light displays. These last features are particulary interesting as they place OLED as the main candidate to replace current notebook panel technology.

"It has a life span of about 30,000 hours of viewing, which is about half of Sony's LCD TVs, but long enough to allow eight hours of daily use for 10 years."

Link: Reuters.

DVI hasn't even been fully adopted and we are in for a replacement already. What's the need for that? Monitors are still being sold with the aging (analog) VGA connectors, why another change so fast? Basically, because of resolutions.

A single-link DVI connection has enough bandwidth to display resolutions up to 1920x1200 at 60Hz. To get more, dual-link DVI was introduced. That way we can go all the way up to 2560x1600 at 60Hz. The problem is that this is as much as the technology will allow, it can't be updated anymore.

The current generation of DisplayPort reaches 2560x2048 at 60Hz (single connector) and it could be improved to 3840x2400 at 60Hz in 2008-2009 (revision 2).

Furthermore, DisplayPort is a single standard to both graphics cards and internal connections in notebooks. It's also smaller and easier to plug.

Link: bit-tech.

Samsung sells different panels under the same monitor name, so what? That's what X-bit labs thinks about it. It's a common practice among display manufacturers, and the panels choosen for the 226BW are of "identical specs". That's what they say.

I usually trust this people, but in this case I'm a little bit resilient. They don't provide data to defend their take on the subject. On the other hand, BeHardware is more or less specialized in monitors, and their oposing opinion was based on a long and meticulous review.

If that were all of it I would believe BeHardware, but a trusted distributor I know also says that this monitor's problems can be mostly corrected using color profiles. With information going in all directions, I would just stay away from this model if I were you.

It had to happen, with so many monitors and dead pixel policies coming down the pipe from Phillips, sooner or later a retailer was to be mistaken. I'm not telling wich one it is, so they don't blame me for running out of stock on a product they shouldn't be selling like they do.

This is not a series "B" TFT (but a 50$ cheaper one from the "S" line), so it doesn't qualify as ISO 13406-2 Class I compliant "dot-defect-free" display. If you don't find this "special deal" on the web, but feel curious about it's features, here they are.

There's nothing impressive on the list, but advertised response time (typical) is good:  5 ms. 16.2 million colours is always interesting on an LCD. Refresh rate isn't bad either: 1280 x 1024 @ 75 Hz (digital input). And one more thing, effective viewing area is 376.3 x 301.1 mm. This is overlooked on a regular basis, and it shouldn't because it roughly tells you if the aspect ratio corresponds to the maximum resolution. In this case it does, 5:4 is the appropiate for a 1280 x 1024 resolution panel (not 4:3 like most monitors).