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Editor's HDTV Pick

HP 47 inch MediaSmart 1080p LCD HDTV "Out of the box" digital media platform. Enjoy videos, pictures and music from home network + digital media delivered over your broadband Internet connection + 3 x HDMI

Hitachi have released the StarBoard FX-Duo-77 multi-touch Interactive Whiteboard which feature the ability for users to collaborate using the board at the same time (two points of contact). The board can be operated using hand gestures such as the spreading apart of two fingers (no special pens or pointers required) to enlarge an on-screen object. Another useful feature is the selection of 24 customizable side buttons for quick operation of common tasks without navigating software menus. For peace of mind, Hitachi have contained the all FX-Duo-77 electronics in a replaceable component and covered it with a five-year warranty.

All StarBoards come with Hitachi Software’s StarBoard Software which includes a suite of presentation and conferencing utility tools and applications such as Microsoft PowerPoint. As with other interactive whiteboards the StarBoard Software includes interactive annotation tools, both handwriting and geometric object recognition capability and LAN or WAN networked conferencing features.

If you are unfamiliar with Interactive Whiteboards you might like to read Presentation Technology Reviews overview of their features and capabilities.

Technorati Tags: StarBoard FX-Duo-77, Interactive Whiteboard, StarBoard Software

Each year Pacific Media Associates conduct a survey of North American Dealers to rate large screen display manufacturers. The survey requires each dealer to rate each manufacturer on a broad range of relevant factors including products, marketing support, after-sale support, on-time delivery and end-user support. Some 25 different factors are rated and combined for an overall composite rating for each manufacturer.

For 1997 the six award recipients were;

Gold Award: Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America Inc.
Silver Award: Epson America, Inc.
Bronze Award: Optoma
Honorable Mention: Hitachi America, Ltd. / NEC Display Solutions / Eiki International, Inc.

Already having developed a 21 inch OLED display prototype, Toshiba and Matsushita have now announced that they will release via their joint venture, Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Company, an OLED television, probably 30 inch, by 2009.

Some Quick facts on OLED displays

• OLED substances are electroluminescent – they emit light when a current is applied
• do not require a backlight
• greater color gamut possible
• require far less energy than LCD or Plasma displays
• panels can be very thin
• OLED films can be deposited on a display substrate by a process similar to ink-jet printing promising lower manufacturing costs
• provide very wide viewing angles
• excellent contrast – unlike LCD displays with a backlight OLED films emit no light when off
• the display technology and the manufacturing process do not present limits to possible screen sizes or resolutions
• flexible displays are possible by printing OLED films onto flexible display substrate

Some of the lifetime issues of OLED organic material seem to have been resolved with discoveries like that of blue PHOLED which has a 20,000 hour lifetime. However, displays will have to be well sealed or protected otherwise as moisture can damage organic display materials.

It seems that Toshiba and Matsushita are being realistic about the difficulties of bringing a new technology to the consumer market. ToshibaToshiba’s President and CEO Atsutoshi Nishida has commented that, “We don’t expect that the organic EL can compete from the beginning on the equal footing with the LCD TV, which is released from many manufacturers across the world, but we believe its superiority will be recognized as production volume rises.”

Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Company won’t be alone in bringing OLED technology to the television market as Sony has already manufactured OLED display prototypes and is also developing OLED displays for televisions.

Most interesting of this new offering from Hitachi is the introduction of two new technologies:

• In-plane Switching (IPS) providing a 178 degrees field-of-view and
• An integrated digital video recorder utilizing twin tuners

Integrated ViXS XCode Digital Video Recorder

The new Hitachi LCD allows extended recording of High Definition video to an internal 250GB hard drive via XCodeHD while keeping the resolution intact. The high-definition transrating technology allows hours of recording HD content while maintaining the original high quality picture.

It was only on April 17 that the 2001 startup, XiXS Systems, announced its newest breed of video processors featuring support for high definition (HD) broadcast content. The XCode 2121 and 2111 processor’s are based on ViXS’ powerful XCodeHD Engine which provides encoding and reprocessing technology to reduce video bit rates while maintaining the same quality as the original content. The reduced bit rate allows content to be stored using only half the space required by other video encoders. The XCodeHD Engine can also provide HD-to-SD downscaling.

Founded in January 2001, ViXS Systems Inc headquartered in Toronto, Ontario and has filed over 100 patents to date.

In-plane Switching (IPS)

Hitachi’s W37L-H9000 LCD panel features in-plane switching (IPS) mode LCD from IPS Alpha Technology, Ltd. IPS Alpha Technology, Ltd is a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd., Toshiba Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., and wholly owned Hitachi subsidiary Hitachi Displays, Ltd.

IPS is a type of TFT-LCD display technology which is advertised as offering a wide 170-degree viewing angle, both horizontally and vertically, along with minimal gray-scale inversion. This is made possible by the liquid crystal molecules rotating while remaining parallel to the substrate when a voltage is applied, yielding perfect orientation of the crystals - according to the companies who have developed it. Read more about this technology at Hitachi Displays.

Hitachi’s W37L-H9000 LCD HDTV has an advertised resolution of 1366 x 768 and brightness of 500cd/m2.

The W37L-H9000 is expected to retail at approximately $3,050 from this September.