Decide what to buy: the Reevoo.com blog

Loewe’s new Connect line of do-everything TVs is just the thing for your minimalist high-tech bachelor pad.

As reported by Gizmodo, they’re Full HD (1080p) with Freeview tuners, a built-in PVR (hard disk recorder), and ethernet, WiFi and USB connections to let you play content from a computer or external disk. There are three screen sizes available: 32", 37" and 42". As you might expect from Loewe, they’re not cheap, either: the prices go from £1,949 up.

You could achieve the same functionality today with a PC running Windows Media Center or MythTV software plugged into your TV, but with a lot more cables and fuss — and I say this as a MythTV user myself. So maybe that additional cost isn’t all so bad after all. And, unlike these complicated computer-based solutions, it should be a lot easier for other members of the household to watch the TV.

It’s starting at the high end of the market, but, as hard disks and WiFi get cheaper, and home networks become ubiquitous, we’ll inevitably see more manufacturers beginning to produce this kind of integrated television — at more affordable prices, with luck.

It might come as a surprise, but LCD televisions have only just managed to overtake their bulkier, uglier, but cheaper counterparts, CRTs, to become the most frequently brought TV type worldwide.

With market penetration of LCDs in the West at around 80%, most of the growth over the last year has come from developing regions, where LCD is becoming a natural replacement for CRT, since it is able to handle a wide range of screen sizes. According to DisplaySearch, shoppers are still having to pay more than double the price for an LCD compared to an equivalent-sized CRT.

LCD has also made inroads into the big-screen market, formally the exclusive domain of plasmas. Although this market is not big (plasmas made up less than 7% of TV shippings in Q4 of 2007), it is important for future growth. LCDs now have a majority of the 40"+ market with 65% unit share (up from 40% a year ago) and the average size of a new LCD TV is now over 32". As LCD technology improves at larger screen sizes we can expect that growth to continue.

On the manufacturer front, DisplaySearch reckon that only Samsung, LG and Sony increased their production volumes over the past year, with Samsung remaining firmly at no.1 as the top TV brand by volume and revenue share.

If you’ve been thinking about buying a dinky Ipod Shuffle but haven’t got around to it yet, Apple has good news for you.
 
Firstly, they have cut the price of the 1GB shuffle from £49 to £32.

Secondly, they have introduced a new 2GB model at £45.

That means that compared to last week you can now buy a Shuffle with twice the storage for £4 less.

My suspicion is that Apple have felt the need to invigorate Shuffle sales since the release of the super-dinky new Nano, available for £100. The Shuffle lacks a lot of the touches that distinguish its more expensive Apple siblings, selling mainly on the Apple cachet.  After inspecting a friend’s Zen Stone Plus I thought it compared pretty well with the Shuffle, and I’d probably give it edge for £27.

Do Shuffle-owners disagree?

Now that HD-DVD’s been officially abandoned, everyone who still has hardware in stock is selling it off cheaply. Buying an HD-DVD player seems like a poor investment, but you can look at it another way: it’s now possible to buy a high-quality upscaling DVD player with an HDMI output that will make your existing DVDs look great. The retailers have noticed this marketing angle, as Engadget wryly observe.

Toshiba’s HD-EP30 is a prime example, having gone from over £200 to under £80 at the time of writing — and the price is still dropping. That’s quite a discount, and you’re probably getting some really good quality electronics for the money, but it might still not be the best value out there if you’re looking for a budget-friendly way to watch DVDs on an HDTV.

For example, the Toshiba SD370E is available for just £40. It’s an HD DVD player rather than an HD-DVD player — that hyphen makes a difference! — but its HDMI upscaling ‘makes old DVD’s sparkle on an HD television’, according to one reviewer.

Here’s another idea for all those obsolete HD-DVD discs that might otherwise be headed to make roads in China: bulletproof vests!

A man in the US was saved from a bullet in the stomach by a DVD in his pocket.

McRoy didn’t realise his DVD had taken a hit until he put his hand in
his jacket pocket and "pulled out a handful of shattered plastic" and a
fragment of the bullet.

That was an old school DVD, but I’m sure HD-DVDs would work just as well. A scale mail hauberk of HD-DVDs would make an excellent budget bulletproof vest.

On the other hand, if you actually want to watch what’s on the discs, you might find this guide to converting HD-DVDs to Blu-Ray useful.

For a long time, streaming video on the internet meant tiny, postage-stamp-sized images and a lot of buffering … buffering … buffering …. More recently, better connections, cheaper bandwidth, and improved compression technology have greatly improved things, as you can see on YouTube, the BBC’s streaming iPlayer, and other similar sites. But if you’ve tried to watch some of these clips full-screen on a big monitor, you’ll know that there are still some shortcomings, particularly when there’s a lot of action in the video.

Addressing this, video-sharing site Dailymotion has announced that, from now on, they’re going to be encoding everything in high definition where possible — i.e., where the source is high definition. They’re even going to go back and re-encode older stuff. By HD, they mean 720p, so it’s not ‘full’ HD, but it’s still pretty good, and should look much better on high-resolution screens. You can browse Dailymotion’s HD content on a dedicated page.

As they point out, however, you’ll need more bandwidth and processing power to watch these videos than for the regular content. So keep an eye on things, and don’t come crying to me when your ISP boots you off or charges extra for all the extra bits!

It’s not just individuals on capped tariffs who are going to be hit by this, though: ISPs are also suffering from the increased bandwidth demands. According to one analysis, the BBC iPlayer alone increased ISP bandwidth costs by two hundred percent.

Some people have been suggesting that the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle was already irrelevant, and that downloadable movies might turn out to be the real winner in the high definition format wars. It’s still the case that a lorry full of Blu-Ray discs is capable of moving a lot more data a lot more quickly than the internet can manage it, so the success of downloadable HD video would seem to depend on whether the infrastructure can keep pace. Plus, it looks like Blu-Ray is still the clear winner over other distribution methods in terms of video quality. Personally, my bet would be on Blu-Ray for the moment.

Sony have announced details of their forthcoming new NWZ-A820 range of Walkmans. According to Engaget, the press release has been on and offline over the past couple of days, but we have a copy, and some pictures:

These all models all feature a pretty nice 2.4" screen, which compares well with the Ipod nano (2") and is about the same as Ipod classics and the Creative Zen (2.5"). In combination with 16GB flash memory, these Walkmans will probably compete directly with the Zen, filling the same gap between the Nano and the Touch. Pricing hasn’t been announced but I’d expect them to be around the £100 mark. The edge the NWZ-A820 will claim is battery life: 10 hours of video playback and 36 hours of music compares favourably to the Zen’s 5 hours of video and 25 hours of music.

Also included is support for Bluetooth headsets, so you can avoid strangling yourself as you get off the bus.

I’m not sure about the styling and colour choices though. It just seems like any non-Apple mp3 player manufacturer has no idea how to design a pretty device. What do you think?

With demise of HD-DVD finally complete yesterday, French company Sigmatek’s announcement of a new ‘budget’ Blu-ray player is timely.

One advantage HD-DVD always had that discs and players were both cheaper than the Blu-ray equivalent. In the end content, not price, seems to have been deciding factor in this format war, with Warner’s abandonment of the format widely cited as the main turning point.

The demise of HD-DVD shouldn’t stop Blu-ray prices coming down down - competition and cost-cutting should do that - but it does mean that manufacturers now have one less incentive to sell Blu-ray equipment at low or no profit. So it will be interesting to see if this player is followed by a rash of cheaper players or not.

This player apparently benefits from a new cheaper laser manufactured by Sony and Nichia.

The specs on Simatek’s SBR-1000:

* Output Resolution: 1080p (24/60) / 720p
* HDMI Version: 1.3
* Audio Decoding: Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD, DTS, MP3
* Media Support: BD-Rom/DVD/VCD/CD/CD-R/DVD+R (RW)
* Video Output: HDMI/Component/Composite
* Audio Output: Coaxial

The price? £185, making it the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market when it appears in April. Of course, you can probably get a HD-DVD player for a fiver now.

(Via: Gizmodo)

We’ve known for a while that some celebrities don’t look quite as good in high definition, and certain producers have even gone so far as to shoot their more distinguished actors in soft focus, but it now looks like EastEnders is the latest to fall victim to the curse of HDTV.

The Albert Square set looks OK on standard TV, but high definition shows up the scratches, bangs, and taped-over repair jobs that the Elstree set’s acquired over twenty years of regular use. As a BBC memo primly puts it, ‘HD will highlight scenery defects’.

The solution proposed is a move to a brand-new purpose-built Albert Square set at Pinewood Studios, to be made out of brick and concrete rather than cardboard and sticky tape.

Cynics are suggesting that it’s just a PR excuse, and that the BBC want to sell off the valuable Elstree land as part of cost-cutting measures, but we couldn’t possibly comment.

Continuing our occasional series on offbeat robotic TV accessories, we bring you news of an exciting product: CLO Systems’ remote controlled X-Arm robotic flat panel TV mounting arm.

Who are CLO Systems? you may ask. None other than ‘the industry leader in advanced robotic mounting solutions for flat panel displays’. I’m not sure that this is a particularly crowded marketplace, to be honest, but if you want a ‘robotic mounting solution’, you know where to go. I’ll let them explain it in their own words:

Don’t miss the interactive demo, which lets you extend, swivel, and tilt a simulated TV.

It’s cool, but in the same way that a motorised shopping trolley is cool: more because someone had the audacity to try it than because it’s solving a genuine problem. But hey, if you’ve got a 40"-60" flat panel TV, a significant viewing angle problem, and US$995 to spare, maybe it’s just what you’re looking for!