Category: Home cinema
Optoma takes the wraps off its HD82 ThemeScene high-end projector
LCDs and Plasmas get big, but for a MASSIVE screen, you can’t beat a projector. Optoma’s latest addition to its ThemeScene range is the HD82, which will project a vast 150″, high definition picture onto a wall, ceiling, or even onto a shower curtain, if you so desire.
It’s got a whopping 20,000:1 contrast ratio, 680:1 ANSI contrast, and 1080p full HD. It claims ‘near-silent’ operation, and the bulb should last 3,000 hours in standard mode. Connectivity-wise, there’s two HDMI ports, component input, Scart, DVI and VGA, so there’s very few things you won’t be able to plug in. It’ll be available this month, and cost £3000.
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Epson shows off new EB-8 Series desktop projector range
Epson has decided that it’s time to produce some more “projectors that work well from a table top” and to that end has introduced the EB-8 Series.
Aimed primarily at the educational and business markets, the series offers up to WXGA resolution, a colour light output (Epson’s new measurement system that for the moment makes it impossible to compare this to any other manufacturers’ models) of up to 3,000 lumens from a 200W lamp, white light output (brightness) also up to 3,000 lumens, optional wireless functionality, and the ability to be used with Epson’s new Document Camera (basically enabling you to present things via USB without the need for a computer or laptop)…
GIANT GADGETS: Remote Control
If I’m honest there’s very little to say about this. It’s a massive remote control. It looks funny. That’s about it. Oh, how massive? 8.26″ wide x 11.69″ tall x 1.35″ thick. Each button is over an inch wide. For comparison, it’s about the same size as a stack of A4 office paper.
Want it to go with your massive telly, massive sofa and massive can of beer? It’ll cost you $28.90 (£20 or so).
Dealextreme (via Technabob)
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Marantz debuts its first high-end DVD player, the BD8002
Marantz, makers of high-end audiovisual gear, has just brought out a flagship Blu-ray player for people with loads of cash or an obsessive interest in home cinema. The BD8002 has full 1080p and 24fps output, as well as onboard lossless decoding of most standard audio codecs.
On top of that, there’s high-quality upscaling for DVDs, and will play all sorts of stuff: VCDs, SVCDs, MP3s, WMA and DivX video files, as well as displaying JPEG images. There’s an SD Card slot, too. The BD8002 is available now, and costs a lot of money. £1,800 to be precise.
Marantz BD8002
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Turn your PC into a home cinema with a USB to HDMI dongle
Many laptops these days are starting to arrive with HDMI ports and Blu-ray drives, so you can use your new laptop to hook up your massive 40″ telly and enjoy HD content via your PC. Many people play PC games on massive monitors, too. But what do you do if you don’t have a graphics card with a HDMI output?
You buy one of these. Plug one end into a spare USB port and the other into your TV, and voila – a 720p, or 1280 x 720, display. It’ll take care of the sound too, via the HDMI cable. Best of all, you’re not limited to just one of these – you can plug in as many as you have USB ports. Fancy rocking seven in a row? 8960 x 720 resolution!
Lancerlink (via Akihabaranews)
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Super-thin Sony Bravia ZX1 ready for sale – Bravia EX1 & 200Hz Z4500 on shelf too
Now that I’ve booked my flights, hotel, planned my shopping and rid myself of the anger of the £3,489 Sony XEL-1 OLED from this morning, I can tell you about their other Bravia TVs that’ll be hitting the EU shortly.
Sony Bravia ZX1
First up is the super thin 9.9mm LCD Bravia ZX1 we saw at IFA in August last year. It’s the one pictured above.
As promised it’s a 40″ panel with a frame rate of…
SHINY VIDEO REVIEW: Emtec S800 HDD Movie Cube
Over Christmas I ate a lot of turkey, drank a lot of wine, and fiddled endlessly with this – the Emtec S800 movie cube. I’ll break it to you now – it’s not a cube – but it is a great little home entertainment set-top-box that lets you stream video over a network and record television.
Not one for the technophobic amongst you, but if you like tinkering with your AV setup then it comes highly recommended. It costs £230 and the company claims it’s available now from Dixons, but I certainly can’t see it on the site, or anywhere else for that matter. If you know where you can buy it in the UK, drop us a line in the comments.
Related posts: Emtec S800 HDD Movie Cube – an all-in-one digital media set-top-box | Emtec launches Movie Cube-R multimedia centre
Inauguration 2.0 – Presidents' speeches broken down into tag clouds
You can tell it’s the 21st Century. The good folks over at ReadWriteWeb have broken down the full text of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech yesterday into a tag cloud using Wordle.net. The results are interesting – “nation” and “new” come out on top. Click for embiggening.
Just for fun, they’ve also analysed the speeches of Bush in 2005, Clinton in 1999, Reagan in 1981 and Lincoln in 1861 and 1865. You can see the clouds after the jump, but it’s quite interesting to see how much Bush relied on the word ‘freedom’ Reagan on ‘government’ and Lincoln on ‘constitution’ first, and then ‘war’.
Pioneer introduces BDP-LX91 Blu-ray player
Pioneer is launching another Blu-Ray player, called the BDP-LX91. The company is referring to it as its ‘flagship’ player, and for good reason – it’s got a freshly-developed 16-bit video engine which will perform decoding, conversion, scaling and other adjustments at a rapid pace, as well as upscaling DVD content to 1080p.
As well as lovely video, the player delivers crisp audio with 7.1 channel Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding and bit stream output. There’s dual HDMI outputs, too, and it’s been certified as sounding really rather good by none other than legendary Beatles producer George Martin’s AIR studios.
This player’s available now, but it’ll set you back £1,700. Ouch. Still, it’s a damn fine machine, and if you’re even considering it, then you won’t bat an eyelid at that price.
Pioneer BDP-LX91
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SHINY VIDEO REVIEW: Optoma GT-7000 GameTime 720p projector
It was my pleasure to take a good long look at the Optoma GT-7000 GameTime projector over Christmas and I spent many an hour…
