Ultimate Kitchen includes LCD, of course

We wish the UK's John Lewis would expand elsewhere, just so we could keep up with the department store's latest kitchen creations. Last year, we were smitten by its fridge-based wine cellar, and now it's done it again.

The Ultimate Kitchen Combo lives up to its name as a 4-in-1 system that includes an electric oven, a steam oven, a wall-mounted coffee machine, and a 19-inch LCD TV. Perhaps most impressive of all, this Rube Goldberg-sounding mashup of appliances looks surprisingly uncluttered, resembling some sort of high-tech art gallery.

When all this is taken into account, as BornRich points out, the combined price of US$4,500 actually doesn't seem that outrageous. But as a final deal sweetener--especially for guys--we'd recommend that they throw in a game console.

Via CNET Crave

Hello Kitty TV cutie

This one is for all you Hello Kitty lovers out there. The newly appointed Japanese tourism mascot has a new product under her belt. This time, it's a white/pink or black/red 19-incher from Uniden garnished with its now signature silhouette. Putting aside its "cute" factor, this LCD TV has a unique native resolution of 1,440 x 810 pixels plus all the usual goodies. We're talking about a digital TV tuner complete with an electronic program guide and HDMI input.

We know it's pretty irrelevant to touch on the technicalities here when it's all about the Hello Kitty adoration. But just for the record, this display has a humble 1,000:1 contrast, 300cd/m2 brightness and 5ms response time. Price and availability-wise, it will retail for about US$650 accordingly to Akihabara News, and is most probably another exclusive for the Japanese market.

Via Akihabara News | Photo credit: Akihabara News

Elevate your PC's fidelity via NuForce Icon

There're plenty of reasons audiophiles shun the PC as a jukebox, the most common being the "ear-piercing" and "bloated" sonics from multimedia speakers. To bridge the performance gap, NuForce has the S$369 (US$266.60) Icon integrated desktop audio amplifier. Unlike its competitors' solutions, this is possibly one of the few all-in-ones built with enthusiast-grade components and featuring a slew of capabilities. They include a PC USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC), 12W x 2 digital amplifier, 3.5mm headphone amp and stereo preamplifier--all packed into a metallic miniature package.


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Will the last HD-DVD be a collector's item?

The HD-DVD version of the Irish flick Disco Pigs goes on sale now along with the Japanese anime collection, Freedom: 6. According to Wikipedia's entry on HD-DVD, these will be the last HD-DVD titles to be released in the US (though Bandai Visual says it wants to release the remaining episodes of the Freedom Project series on HD-DVD). The final big studio releases, Warner's Twister and P.S. I Love You, hit stores in May.

Personally, I wish The Last American Virgin was the last American HD-DVD. That film, a minor 1980s classic, was marked by a brutal ending that showed that sometimes nice guys do, indeed, finish last. HD-DVD, a good format to many, shared a similar fate.

So, anybody out there still buying HD-DVDs? Any collectors plan on buying Disco Pigs?

Via CNET News Blogs

Mitsubishi brings 3D to HDTV

Our entertainment systems have evolved from black and white to color, from fuzzy 480i to ultraclear 1080p, from mono to 7.1 surround sound, from Sony's Betamax to Sony's Blu-ray--what's next you might say? With Mitsubishi's latest line of televisions, the company has stuck out its leg into the elusive realm of 3D; that is, 3D with the glasses and stereoscopic display.

You'll notice from the image above that Mitsubishi's display isn't using the traditional 3D headgear. Old 1950s era black-and-white movies used what's called an anaglyph display, which simply means an image is colorized in cyan and blue and layered on top of each other, providing an image--albeit fuzzy image--with a 3D effect. The problem was if a person tilted his or her head even slightly, the image would appear askew. Circularly polarized glasses, however, which has been popular lately--as seen in Disney's 3D movies, such as Chicken Little--superimposes two images on top of each other with an active filter, correcting the tilt problem and providing for clearer and more convincing 3D image.
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