Toob

Beat Someone With Your Beta Deck

The Blu-Ray Versus HD DVD battle continues.

<<snip>>
With a stated desire for some form of format unification but no consensus on the details, backers of the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD next-generation optical-disk formats have said they will forge ahead with their respective rollout plans for products supporting the still-incompatible specs.<<snip>>

All this for pennies on a disc. Grin.

DirecTV 8 Goes Up Safely, Dish Network Inwardly Groans

The Proton rocket carrying DirecTV 8 made it up and is headed for the ever-more-crowded-parking-orbit at 101 degrees West Longitude (taking over for an aging bird from the first DirecTV launches in 1993.) This will allow more HD signals, and various other ops--including eventual migration to MPEG 4.

You can read the fascinating minutes of the launch and stages firing here.

--OR--

You can read the wonderfully dry press release here (bring water.)

                                                   

Note that at this point all the DirecTV birds are going up via either the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan or the incredible SeaLaunch Platform out in the Pacific.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop Interviews

We won't normally point you at three Q&A's and shut up, but that is just what we are gonna do here at Toob.

[Because they truly differentiate the consoles in ways that the raw specs can't--and can be expected change your view of how they approach the games. If a good interview is not coached--and these appear not, you get some great content.]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop Interviews:

Kazuo Harai, Chief Exec, and Pres, Sony Computer Ent. America (SCEA.)

Satoru Iwata, Pres, Nintendo Ltd. (I've met each of these guys, and Mr. Iwata is the most approachable--but then he oversaw Kirby and Smash Bros. He's a gamer.)

Robbie Bach, Chief Xbox Officer, and Microsoft VP.

Give the Broadcast Flag a TKO

Support the EFF in their effort to knock the Broadcast Flag in the teeth?

Please?

You have an opportunity to do so in your own words or use a pre-written version they have worked up...

Just add your name and the weight of your voting ability to the ranks of those trying hard to quash this ridiculous thing. Thank you.

[The proceeding message was brought to you by an attempt to salvage our rights.]

Xbox2 GPU to Support Component and VGA, But Not DVI

...at least initially. This is the word from our pals over at ExtremeTech. They have a great discussion of the Xbox2 GPU up today. The column brings us lots of technical detail on the pipelines, shaders, et al, but also mentions that DVI is possible--just not shipping in the initial configuration.

The lack of DVI was mentioned in a previous article (see below for a snip of Extreme Tech's interview with Microsoft's VP of Hardware for the Xbox2, Todd Holmdahl.)
So the new GPU discussion from today puts paid to any question about ATI being ABLE to support DVI out. This was unclear before.
<<snip>>ET: What sort of connections can we expect to our TVs, out of the box? The original Xbox comes with just composite video, and you have to go buy another pack if you want S-video, or another pack if you want component.

TH: With the Xbox 360 you'll be able to connect to composite or component out of the box. There will be other things that we support like VGA.

ET: So you will support VGA this time around?

TH: Yeah. We'll also support some of the SCART type adaptors in Europe. It will support S-video, but not out of the box.

ET: What about DVI or HDMI? Those are popular connections on HDTVs these days.

TH: We believe that we have the right set of outputs right now to meet the requirements of people who have HDTV sets today. We're continuing to look at what's going on in the future, and as things change, we've developed a very flexible system, so we can adapt to the different demands that are out there.<<snip>>

[What he means here is that HDMI has 12 plus flavors--and not all are compatible, and they decided on VGA and composite instead of a direct DVI for DRM reasons. Grin.]

The Night Sky Will Not Display Your Ad

OK. Feeling thankful here. About seven years ago NPR did an April Fool's Day piece on the launch of a new Coca-Cola Billboard that was due to do a Geosynchronous Orbit in the U.S. night-sky. Sadly, I was taken in for five or six minutes and was actually pissed off about it. Then I realized the date and shut off my radio--'cuz I felt like a complete idiot. [Which is fair, considering the fact that I am...]

Well, our obviously-not-yet-paid-enough-by-the-billboard-lobby Congress has been approached by the F.A.A. and asked to enable legislation that would keep the advertisers of the planet from doing just that.

<<snip>> For instance, outsized billboards deployed by a space company into low Earth orbit could appear as large as the moon and be seen without a telescope, the FAA said. Big and bright advertisements might hinder astronomers.

"Large advertisements could destroy the darkness of the  night sky," regulators said.<<snip>>

So you can rest easy that Sirius Radio won't be brightly shining down on you from where you used to see the dog star back-in-the-day. [And no, this is not about toobs, but it is about public displays of affliction. Grin.]

Not Gonna Cover Mainstream Manufacturer's 1080i Or Less...

Toshiba is shipping 11 new displays. Eight of them are less than 1080p... so we'll cover three of them--eventually someone will get a hint. Grin.

Here are the part numbers and RETAIL prices on the three 1080p models: 56MX195 (56", September 2005, $3,799.99); 62MX195 (62" September 2005, $4,099.99); 72MX195 ( 72"October 2005, $5,299.99)
"Toshiba was first to market with 1080p Micro-Display Projection TV, and we're back with new TALEN X," said Scott Ramirez, VP, Marketing. "By combining the Texas Instruments xHD4 1080p chip with advanced optics, a high brightness lamp, DEEP Picture technology and Xtreme BLAC(TM), our XHD(TM) 1080p models introduce a new level of clarity and contrast into the Micro-Display category."

[By which he means, our 57” LCoS sets (57HLX82) took an asswhupping by the consumer and the media and we’ve folded our tents and gone with DLP this time. Personally, someone needs to start making TI cry a bit. D-ILA, SED, LCoS, GLV, SXRD, I don’t care.]

Lastly, they have built in tuners, a fair number of in and outputs, and carry a Firewire/IEEE1394 port which means a lot.

Samsung 40" Less Than 1" Thick OLED To Be Shown

In Boston, at the Society of Information Display 2005 International Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition in Boston, May 22 through 27th, Samsung is expected to show a 40" flavor of their OLED. This unit was previously shown in 14.1" and 21" versions (right click the 21" above left.) This is the same show that expects to show both the Motorola NED and the Toshiba/Canon SED. Grin.

[SID Show Gives Loud Oh-LED to NED, FED and his Brother SED. Hee.]

This larger flavor prototype  is mentioned by various pundits as either 1280X800 or 1920X1080--so for all we know they'll show both. But what is consistent in the early info is that the Black and White contrast ratio is 5000 to 1, and it surpasses 600 nits of brightness.

Lastly Samsung has noted that the OLED panel itself is less than 2.2 centimeters and will be framed in a display that is 3 centimeters thick.

[In other news, Samsung continues to Suck Up To Microsoft, which means that Sony is gonna be pissed, and Nintendo doesn't care. They are from Kyoto and thus above the fray.]

Micron Demos 1.7µm CMOS Sensor [Oooh, BABY!!!]

The lower power, cheaper, happier replacment for the CCD is a CMOS Sensor, yes?

OK. There are reports today that Micron showed off the smallest known pixel size on said sensor in Japan on 16 May. [Yep. Ever since the darned Zepplin Mail Delivery Biz went down, my shit has been slow.]

Here's a quote: "Shrinking pixel size enables mobile and consumer applications with higher resolution and smaller form factors resulting in an enhanced picture taking experience. Additionally, smaller pixel size facilitates increased features in other target applications, such as medical, biometrics and high-speed.” said Hisayuki Suzuki, Micron’s Senior Director of Marketing for Imaging.

[We could probably all use high-speed at some point, but then our insurance would be through the roof.]

MultiColored L.E.D. Developed--Color Selectable

This is the lede from Phys.org.
<<snip>>
A team of University of California scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed the first completely inorganic, multi-color light-emitting diodes (LEDs) based on colloidal quantum dots encapsulated in a gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor. The work represents a new "hybrid" approach to the development of solid-state lighting. Solid-state lighting offers the advantages of reduced operating expenses, lower energy consumption and more reliable performance.
<<snip>>

Here's the press release from Los Alamos National Labs... they first published the results in Nano Letters.

Clearly this is something that would really push natural lighting through a great number of display-types, LCD's included. And eventually, if-color-selectable turns out to be  an easy migration to other venues (ala the Blue L.E.D. to Blue Laser) imagine a G.L.V. display, with a Natural Light Colored Laser.

[In the meantime we can imagine a much nicer household lighting scheme than the folks from OTT Light or UltraLux are delivering.]