It’s a good move – not only does it extend the features of your Samsung HDTV, Blu-ray and home cinema devices, letting you watch YouTube videos or Flickr pics from you HDTV for example, it also locks you into Samsung’s kit!

But Samsung have much bolder plans than letting you download apps onto your TV: different Samsung devices can talk to each other via certain apps, giving you full control of your HDTV, for example, from your Samsung smartphone.

An example shown in the video below comes from the Samsung booth, where they’ve been showing off a fishing game that’s controlled by a Samsung smartphone. The app is played on the Samsung HDTV, but controlled by the phone, which also displays whatever it is you’ve caught.

This is a neat demonstration of the technology, and although the game itself isn’t going to win any awards, it gives us a glimpse of how Samsung expects the technology to work in the future. That is, all home entertainment and mobile devices are connected, communicating, interacting with each other – and all made by Samsung!

Indeed, this is my only reservation about the SamsungApp store. Although it’s innovative and open (you can develop your own HDTV apps for the SamsungApp store – just download the SDK when it’s released and build yourself an app!), it does rather restrict you to Samsung technology.

Still that’s only a minor concern – with an open app store, many of the Web’s best content sites will soon become available for your Samsung device whether it’s HDTV, Blu-ray or home cinema, and nobody says you have to use a Samsung smartphone to control it – you can still watch YouTube on your Samsung HDTV while owning an iPhone!

The official announcement of the SamsungApps store can be seen in the video below.

[Source: Engadget]

Just announced at CES 2010, aside from the usual set of Blu-Ray and home theatre features (you know, 5.1 channel surround sound, wireless rear speakers, subwoofer, etc.), the LG LHB975 also features Ethernet and Wifi and a range of built-in Web apps that let you connect to dozens of online media services.

Like what, you might ask? Well, like this:

• NetFlix
• VUDU
• CinemaNow
• YouTube
• Pandora
• Picasa
• AccuWeather

All of these are accessible directly from the box and can be used via its remote. Just one more way the Web (or at least parts of it) can be piped directly to your telly.

You can also access contact wirelessly from a variety of other devices, as the LG LHB975 is DLNA certified. So if you get bored with YouTube, you can watch the camera phone videos you took on your DLNA-equipped mobile phone (which most of them are these days).

If you’re still bored, the LHB975 also comes with an iPod dock, which, with its the LHB975′s Watts of power, should help you enjoy your music, even if you’re 30 miles away!

Clever stuff!

[Source: Engadget]

As such, it acts as an extension to the humble DVD player by playing your films, videos and tunes through an audio-grade 5.1 surround sound amp, letting you hear your media in ways you’ve probably not heard for a while!

Indeed, this is one of the problems with digital media. The boxes on which it’s stored (e.g. your PC, MP3 player, USB stick, etc.) are all very clever, but they don’t go out of their way to provide an enhanced listening experience.

This is somewhat ironic – we’ve freed the music with digital technology, giving us a much broader range of tunes to listen to, but restricted its quality, certainly when compared with previous Hi-Fi units of old.

The Sony DAVDZ260 and other DVD receivers like it aim to change all that by providing a central hub that plugs into your TV and your speakers, and lets you listen to your digital content in glorious clarity – and at 140Watts per channel, your neighbours will hear it too!

Sony DAVDZ260 Overview

Briefly, the Sony DAVDZ260 comes with a DVD player that plays virtually all formats; 5.1 surround sound; FM radio with RDS; a USB port, into which you can slot your MP3 player or mobile phone; and support for Sony’s Direct Port adaptor.

This latter device is an optional extra that lets you not only connect your devices to the DAVDZ260 using a variety of different connectivity options (including Wi-Fi), it also lets you control those devices (well, at least the Sony ones!) via the DAVDZ260′s remote control.

Why you should buy the Sony DAVDZ260 DVD receiver

The Sony DAVDZ260 isn’t perfect, and there are many other competitors out there, but the reason you should go out and get one for Christmas is that’s just had something of a price reduction! EmpireDirect, for example, are currently selling the Sony DAVDZ260 for just

3M have beaten all their competition to the post and announced the launch of their MPro110 pocket projector. It will go on sale this month, to be more precise the 30th September 2008. This little projector was reviewed by PopSci and the results were pretty good. Through the use of LCoS display technology the MPro110 is able to display VGA (640 x 480) resolution. So no high definition, but considering the size it is not that surprising; no HD yet but it will not be long before there is a HD pocket projector, technology is moving very fast and the future of mobile technology is looking great.

Many companies have been promising pocket projectors with exotic technologies such as lasers and microscopic mirrors or Light Blue optics with holograms, but 3M have won the day by keeping it simple. 3M have just used LEDs to light their projector which are energy efficient and don’t need a fan so the MPro110 runs nice and quietly.

The LED is bright enough to be seen in a brightly lit room but few movie scenes were deemed “indecipherable.”, having said that in a dark room it could project an image up to 50-inches and so offers the ultimate cheap-o home cinema. Weighing just 0.3 lbs and measures less than an inch high, 3M’s MPro110 is perfect for travelling presenters.

The 3M MPro110 will retail for about $359, it doesn’t have internal speakers but then who wants to listen to the tiny sound coming from micro speakers anyway, it is far better to use an external set.

[Source: PopSci]

Movie nights with friends and family won’t be the same again with Open Air Cinema’s 9′x5′ CineBox Home Backyard Theater System. This product has a real “Wow” factor: wow when you see it erected in your garden; imagine inviting your friends over to watch the game, or a film, and leading them straight through the house, past the TV, and out into the backyard were you have this 9 foot monster of a screen ready and waiting. You are also going to say wow when you hear its price which is very reasonable.

The 9 foot screen can be packed in a duffle bag when it is deflated and weighs just 8lbs (3.6kg) which makes it real easy to move around and store. Using the quiet air blower you can inflate the puncture-proof screen in a couple of minutes.

As I mentioned before the CineBox system from Open Air Cinema comes at a reasonable price and they have even given you options to choose from. If you just want the 9 foot inflatable screen you can snap it up at just USD$399. Which is fine if you have a projector hanging around, for all those without a projector, DVD player and powered speakers CineBox systems provide a package which will include all these with the screen and inflation pump starting at USD$1,500.

The CineBox system is a fair bit cheaper than getting a waterproof HDTV like the Sanyo

Yet another black box for your living room? Yes and no, this little beauty is Belkin’s new wireless transmitter and receiver, aka FlyWire. FlyWire can connect to all your devices without the need to install wiring, so no more climbing up ladders and ripping out bits of your house in an effort to connect everything up without seeing wires all over the place. The new wireless transmitter can send 1080p video over a 5GHz band, and it is not all beauty and no brains, to make sure there is no interference it intelligently adjusts the frequency and power. Read on for more details.

Belkin offer a basic remote control for switching between the different inputs, and good news for everyone using a universal remote control, it works over IR.

FireWire will come in two flavours: FlyWire AV69003 and FlyWire R1 AV69000.

FlyWire AV69003 will be priced at $999.99 and is intended as a whole home solution. You will be able to have your devices anywhere in the house and be able to control them all through the Belkin FlyWire. The control of the devices will be done in one of two ways, either IR backchannel or through IR receiver and IR blaster attachments. Either way you will be able to hide your AV devices away in other rooms or cupboards and keep your living room nice and clutter free. FlyWire AV69003 will hit the stores late October 2008.

FlyWire R1 AV690000 will be priced at $699.99 and is meant for one room only so you don’t get the cool IR backchannel or the IR blaster attachment. This one seems slightly pointless to me as, yes you are reducing the number of wires but you still have to have the AV devices on show to be able to control them… Anyway, this version will be available around the first quarter of 2009.

As for connections, both versions will have three types of input: 3 HDMI, 2 component, and 1 composite. As it would be a little useless without an output it also has 1 HDMI.

For more detailed spec check out Business Wire.

[Source: Business Wire]

Sony’s current largest OLED TV is only 11”, which is easy to move around but not really what you want in a home entertainment system, especially when it will set you back over a

The Sony BRAVIA LCD TV W4000 series (catchy name isn’t it), which has just been released in Korea, has more features than you can shake a stick at. Starting with the usual bits and pieces: it has 1080p full HD and uses the BRAVIA Engine 2 which, in their words, “provides the next generation in picture quality”, this basically boils down to enhanced depth, richness and clarity, or in other words, an awesome picture quality.

You think this is just a TV, when you turn it off all you get is 52 inches of blank screen? Wrong, it also doubles as a digital picture frame. There are a lot of picture frames around, even my mum has one, and they come in all sorts of sizes but I have never seen a 52″ digital picture frame before. The Picture Frame Mode in the Sony BRAVIA W4000 switches the set to a reduced brightness and displays digital photos. There are six pre-installed pictures but you can add your own via USB, so if you wished you could have your smiling mug displayed in glorious HD. However this is not a feature that will please people trying to go green as it only uses 10% less power than TV viewing mode, so it is still using 90% of the power.

There are a bunch of technologies working together to make the picture and sound quality simply superb (for full details check out Sony) but one of the neater features is the integrated HDTV tuner and AVC-HD decoder which means you don’t need to buy a separate set-top box to access terrestrial HDTV. This means one less box cluttering up your living room. If you are anything like me you already have several and just as many remotes to go with them. I know you can get universal remotes but I just haven’t got around to it, with this TV however there is no need for that universal remote because the Sony BRAVIA W4000 does it all for you. With the award winning Sony XMB interface you can control your entire device collection through the TV with a single remote.

[Source: Sony, Aving, MegaModo]

This last features will let the Grundig hook up to any PC in your house and stream MP3 and video directly frolm their hard drives. You also get a 5.1 surround sound speaker system (naturally), and good looking design.

[Source: Aving.net]