Gizmodo: Best Of 2007 – Part II December 18, 2007
READ MORE Blu-ray , Entertainment , Gadgets , Gizmodo UK , HD , HD DVD , HDTV
Philips Aurea
Philips shook things up the HDTV market last year with the launch of its AmbiLight TVs.
The TVs sport side lighting and full-surround lighting that changes colour with the colours on screen, to draw you into the ‘viewing experience’. It really does work and with the lights out, the AmbiLight TVs really are something different. Stunning sales have reflected it too. In August though, Philips took the idea to a whole new level with its Aurea TV.
The Aurea is fully LED backlit too but instead of just shining light on the back wall, the light glows through the TV’s surrounding case to create a dynamic frame. The video above says it all really.
Not cheap at £3,000 for a 42in set but maybe if they threw in a date with Aurea poster girl - Eva Herzigova – we might make an exception.-Martin Lynch
LG BH-100: The First Blu-ray/HD DVD Player
The logical solution to a dual format disc war is to create a dual format player, which is what LG did at the start of the year.
Showing it off at the CES 2007 show in Las Vegas in January, it was certainly one of the show’s top attractions. It wasn’t perfect though. Yes, it could play both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs but it couldn’t deal with the interactive content on HD DVD discs. Not the greatest weakness though since it was the first standalone player to offer a one-player solution to the silly format war.
It came to the UK in April and that’s when we noted a second problem: the £1,000 price tag. Early in 2008 Samsung will be launching its first dual format player, the BD-UP5000, while LG will follow with the BH-200, a more reasonably priced successor to the BH-100.
Both will cost around £450-£500.-Martin Lynch
Surround Sound Bars
Apparently, not everyone likes five speakers hanging on their chic living room walls, with cables and wires snaking around the floor. Mad, I know.
Still, 2007 was the year of the surround bar – a one speaker surround sound system that promises brilliant surround sound neatly and without the fuss.
Yamaha started all of this with the YSP Series of surround bars back in September 2006 and updated its line up with three new models a few months back. However, it’s no longer alone in the space. Audio specialist Polk hopped aboard the pseudo-surround bandwagon with the SurroundBar50 while Philips weighed in with its first offering, the Ambisound HTS8100 SoundBar. AV heavyweight Denon got in on the act with its DHT-FS3 X-SPACE.
They may be simpler than 5-speaker systems but they all share one thing in common: price. Expect to pay £500 to £1,200 for the luxury of tidiness.
HD Camcorders
This year saw the true arrival of HD-capable camcorders. And not just 720p - 1080i models either, but the real deal: 1080p Full HD. OK, no one really wants to see the hairy mole on Granny’s nose in that much detail, but in a few years time you won’t be able to buy anything but some form of HD camcorder.
Toshiba recently introduced one of the nicer examples, in Japan first of course, with its Gigashot A100 Full HD camcorders. Available in two models, they sport very useful 100GB and 40GB HDDs inside. JVC has a Full HD model, the GZ-HD7, but also launched a smaller HD version called the GZ-HD3 with a handy 60GB drive.
Sony launched the very small and slick looking Handycam HDR-CX6EK but it’s somewhat let down by using Sony’s own Memory Stick technology which tops out at 8GB. An even lighter HD contender arrived in the form of Sanyo’s different looking Xacti HD2. Expect to see a lot more of these in 2008 and with less frightening prices too.-Martin Lynch
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Gizmodo: Best Of 2007 – Part 1 December 18, 2007
READ MORE Blu-ray , Consoles , Digital Audio , Digital cameras , Gadgets , Games , Gizmodo UK , HD DVD , HDTV , Hi-fi , Home Cinema , Mobile Devices , Mobile phones , Movies , PS3 , Peripherals , TV , Wii , Xbox , iPhone , iPod
2007 was a cracking year for technology and gadgets, not all living up to the hype, but certainly generating a lot of excitement and, at times, a little controversy.
HD DVD and Blu-ray finally got to claw each other’s throats out, the Wii got to wee all over its rivals - especially the much-maligned and newly arrived PS3 - HDTVs got a helluva lot cheaper, better and some even glowed, USB widgets got weirder, luxury technology got more expensive, videogames got banned and then un-banned, golf carts got pimped, the Church Of England roasted Sony from the pulpit, the PSP went on a diet and became really cool, ‘high-definition (HD)-everything’ became the new obsession, storage drives got bigger and smaller at the same time, broadband and broadband customer service in the UK sucked big time, the BBC launched a hamstrung free download TV service, iPlayer, some unknown product called the iPhone finally arrived with hardly any publicity and William Shatner and Mr. T started doing ads for World of Warcraft.
Oh yeah, London got a Text-A-Loo service – no kidding. What’s not to like? Over the next few days, we’ll be throwing up some guides to the things that caught our roving eye throughout the year.
For now, we’ll kick-off with some of the things that were big in 2007 – even if they did really annoy some people – me included.-Martin Lynch
The Wii
The Wii conquered all. From units sold and games shipped to broken TVs and injured relatives, the globe went Wii crazy.
The UK loves it the most, apparently. So much so there are very few left for Christmas. Nintendo even pulled its UK Christmas ad campaign in an effort to be considerate to all the frenzied mums and dads harassing the nation’s retail sales staff. 2007 saw the Wii smash all console sales records and sweep the BAFTA awards. 2008 will be a bumper year for the innovative console and with the arrival of Wii light-sabers and Star Wars games promising Wii-saber duelling support, the Wii is The Force to be reckoned with.-Martin Lynch
The PS3
A long delay, a heart-stopping price tag and a poor line-up of launch titles helped the PS3 to a lacklustre arrival in Europe. Some faithful got free HDTVs though. It didn’t help - or it probably did – that the Church of England wanted to send Sony straight to Hell without passing Go.
Still, a price cut this summer, a new cheaper 40GB model, better games and the promise of a lot more, and that in-built Blu-ray player have all helped the PS3 pick up steam as the year ends. It even managed a Guinness World Record.
The latest firmware patches have also added some interesting new functions and there’s always Playstation Home to look forward to in Spring 2008 – well, it was supposed to be this Autumn, but what’s six months?-Martin Lynch
The iPhone
Some company called Apple, makers of something called an iPod launched something called an iPhone. It bombed. OK, I lied, it didn’t. And some people even queued.
It pretty much dominated the news for months and months as Apple fanatics and trendsetters snapped up the gadget when it launched this summer in the US. Hackers were also fast to pick it up, and took great delight in unlocking iPhones for enterprising owners. It’s stylish looking, has that Apple-y design factor, some ‘neat’ features like the touch-screen and some apps, but is generally thought to be an over-priced smartphone here because it’s only 2.5G, making it not as Internet-useful as we were led to believe.
Just two months later Apple slashed the price – which really annoyed those early adopters – and sales got even faster. It even got a ‘prestigious’ award. Despite a bungled UK launch, the iPhone seems to be doing OK over here but the price of the unit + contract is staggering, putting off a lot of punters.
Most Gizmodo readers feel the device should be Pay-as-you-go. They also feel that it’s not going to do any real business until it's 3G – and they’re right too. Even Greenpeace had a pop at it. Will that stop it being one of the ‘must-have’ tech accessories in 2008? Not a chance. Anyway, there’s a new one coming….-Martin Lynch
Blu-ray Vs. HD DVD
Storm in a tea-cup? Most boring tit-for-tat battle of the decade or the most important conflict regarding next-gen disc storage and high-definition (HD) movie formats?
Either way, 2007 was the first year when the rival formats got a real chance to woo the world with lots of movies, yet a far less impressive line-up of players. The start of the year saw more movie launches and some new players from the likes of Sharp and Sony. Sony and Panasonic finally brought their standalone Blu-ray players to the UK with prices designed to bring on seizures - in some cases twice the price of the pricey PS3.
Denon launched a £1,000 rig in the Autumn. Sony launched two cheaper models at the IFA Show but still not exactly cheap. As you can see, we were not looking at a mainstream market yet and as 2008 looms, we still aren’t. What 2007 showed was that HD DVD players tended to be a lot cheaper. From the cheap add-on drive for the Xbox 360 and Toshiba consistently cutting the prices of its standalone players to the arrival of a ‘budget HD DVD player with 7-free HD DVD movies’ on Dec 29th, the HD DVD camp is winning the price war.
In the US, Blu-ray has taken a definite lead but in Europe it’s less clear. Overall, people seem more enamoured with Blu-ray and sales of Sony’s format seem to be edging ahead. The PS3 is certainly helping. The HD DVD camp argues differently – that is their job, after all - and you can expect to see this one run and run and run…. And whatever happened to Warner's Total HD?-Martin Lynch
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