You’ve had a moment to ponder over that SD870 purchase, so how’s about yet another option, cool? On the docket today is Canon’s SD950 IS (IXUS 960 IS elsewhere in the world), which packs an awful lot of megapixels into a pocket-friendly shell. As expected from Canon’s SD lineup, this one fared pretty well throughout, garnering praise for its sleek design, superb image quality, effective optical image stabilization / face detection and sturdy feel. The only real knocks came from the less-than-perfect noise performance, slower than expected startup / image capture and the admittedly lofty pricetag. Granted, this one should be close to ideal for poster printers needing a camera minuscule enough to reside in a rear pocket, but for the rest of us, one of Canon’s “lower” models should fit the bill (and our budgets) a bit better.

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from engadget

Sony was all about showing off their new turbo-thin XEL-1 OLED TV at CEATEC today, and we have to hand it to them, this thing is kind of mind-blowingly thin. Naturally that kind of thinness is a little hard to capture in photographs — it’s kind of one of those things you have to see in person. But once you do check it out, you may just find its gorgeous, bright pseudo-HD, 1m:1 contrast ratio picture hypnotizes you from remembering its ridiculously high Â¥200,000 (about $1700 US) price and piddly 11-inch size. We want one on our desk, like, yesterday.

Gallery: Sony 3-mm thin XEL-1 OLED TV in person. Oh, and it’s fricking thin.

    

from engadget

Just as expected, Hitachi is showing off its sub-inch thick 32-inch LCD HDTV samples at CEATEC today. Unfortunately we were able to glean practically no information about the TVs from the Hitachi reps present, but we’re already having a hard time deciding whether 32-inches at 18.8mm thick is better than 11-inches at 3mm. What’s a display nerd to do?

Gallery: Hitachi shows off its 0.74-inch thick LCD HDTV in person

    

from engadget

Panasonic’s got a slew of new set-top Blu-ray recorders today, all of which include AVCHD playback. Further details (like price) are scarce, but they’re launching in Japan today, so who knows if they’ll ever cross the Pacific.

• DMR-BW900 – 1TB drive, 1080p/24 support,
• DMR-BW800 – 500GB drive, 1080p/24 support,
• DMR-BW700 – 250GB drive,
• All three support: 7.1, DD Plus, TrueHD, and DTS-HD

• DMR-XW300 – 500GB drive,
• DMR-XW200V – 250GB drive, also has DVD / VHS
• DMR-XW100 – 250GB drive,

Gallery: Panasonic turns out six new Blu-ray recorders

    

from engadget

We’d like to thank Toshiba for going the extra mile on this one to confuse consumers ever so slightly more. The company behind the HD DVD format is apparently working on a new flagship Vardia DVD / HD DVD recorder (with hard drive) tentatively dubbed the RD-RX7, which is also capable of recording HD video to, wait for it, non-HD DVD DVDs (aka regular DVDs, like the kind your mom finally just got last month). Apparently Toshiba can even fit about 2 hours of HD video onto old school DVD media with “HD Rec technology”, which ain’t too bad compared to the 6 hours of HD video it gets on an HD DVD. It actually kind of leaves us wondering why the hell they’re insisting we upgrade to HD DVD, dunnit? Oh, and the thing also supports HDMI out with 1080p/24, not unlike the other HD DVD recorder being shown off today (about which we’ve little info), the RD-A201. Enjoy.

Gallery: Toshiba’s Vardia HD DVD recorder burns HD video to DVD, too

 

from engadget

Not that it’s of much consequence to those living outside Japan, but we got our hands on a Walkman NW-A910 1seg portable media player. If you know what the specs are and know what 1seg is, you don’t really need further commentary from the likes of us. Commence photo gallery.

Gallery: Sony Walkman NW-A910 hands-on

    

from engadget

Pioneer’s been known to unveil new navigators fairly frequently, but the firm is starting October off right by introducing no fewer than nine new units for you to choose from. Starting at the top, the AVIC-HRZ009G / AVIC-HRV002G both sport seven-inch displays, DVD playback, support for MP3 / AAC / DivX formats, a terrestrial digital TV tuner, built-in hard drive and a wireless remote, with the only real difference being the in-dash design of the former and the on-dash (mountable) design of the latter. As your budget tightens, Pioneer ratchets the specs down on seven other similar siblings, giving users a Â¥126,000 ($1,094) to Â¥262,500 ($2,278) window of alternatives. Hit the read link for all the juicy details on each.

[Via AkihabaraNews]
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