USB DONE RIGHT: Two magic boxes that let computer audio ...

eing formed with Hong Kong’s TPV
Technology. New televisions created by
the venture will be developed, manufactured
and marketed by TP Vision, but
will be badged Philips. The new CEO of
TP Vision, Maarten de Vries, says that
his new company “will continue to bring
the high level of innovation consumers
expect from a Philips TV.”
Oh? Do we still expect it?
Does this sound like a good time to
be getting into the TV business? Guess
who thinks it is…
Of course IKEA sells more than Billy
bookcases. Its stores stock Ikea-branded
stoves and refrigerators too. Next? TV
sets.
Oh, it won’t make them by themselves,
they have a partner. And no,
it’s not Samsung, it’s TCL Multimedia
of Hong Kong. TCL makes RCA sets
among others, though we can’t recall
seeing them anywhere fancier than
Walmart. IKEA is also, you may have
heard, planning to build an entire model
community in the UK. Perhaps it will
come with a little hex key.
Faux 3D
(the Beat Goes On)
What’s been holding back the growth
of home 3D? Well, there’s the fact that a
lot of people are still paying off their 2D
HDTV’s. There’s the fact that both the
quality and the quantity of 3D material
leaves something to be desired. And then
there are the dorky glasses.
So here’s Stream Networks, with its
Ultra-D technology, designed to solve
both the supply and the glasses problems.
Just in time…if it works.
We might as well say that the image
shown here would be misleading even
if it applied to real 3D, but it doesn’t.
We can’t do better than by quoting the
company’s claim from its Web site (the
abusive use of upper case letters is theirs):
Ultra-D is a proprietary 3D technology
(viewing without glasses) that can be used
for PCs, Picture Frames, Tablets, TVs
and other displays; How Maggie Revolutionary Works tablets
(Android based UHF and Windows is, and has based); beenSet
Top
Boxes with Browsers for many for connecting years, the web
to TVs. a (Non-consumer print magazine. applications But we know of the
technology more are enormous and more as they audiophiles can apply to
medical, military want and to read many it other on their industrial
fields.) computer or iPad. And they’re
Sure, we willing can see to the save military money jumping too.
on a system Click that here, adds and bogus let “3D” Maggie information
to explain perfectly how good to images. get the full We’re
told it costs a lot version of money for to $4. “convert”
2D to 3D, and And here’s we mean a set-top a PDF box that
does it on version the fly. without Or not. digitl rights
We management have no plans you to test can the transfer Ultra-D to
system, for the the device same of reason your we choice.
have no
plans to test perpetual motion machines.
(And perpetual motion isn’t dead.
At CES, we got an invitation to drop by
and recharge our cell phone on a system
that uses water as fuel. You can’t make
this stuff up. Or at least we can’t, though
clearly some people can.)
Also on the faux 3D front, James
Cameron, who accelerated the current
taste for the third dimension with his
hugely successful Avatar, gave in to the
commercial lure, and “converted” his hit
film Titanic to 3D. Now if there’s someone
who should know that fake 3D is not
3D, you’d think it’s Cameron, because
he has been so harsh on previous faux
3D movies.
But hey, the 100 th anniversary of the
Titanic’s sinking was in April, the
newspapers and the Web were filled
with Titanic lore, as were the bookstores,
and a 3D re-release could only
be a success.
So how did Cameron do it?
Actually the conversion was done
by a company called Stereo D, using
computers to draw new scenes, essentially
making up new backgrounds.
The painstaking process, which cost
some $18 million, and which Cameron
described as being like mowing the lawn
with nail clippers, was eased by the fact
that many scenes had been computergenerated
anyway..
The problem — and we’ve pointed
this out before — is that in a real 3D
movie people and objects have “roundness.”
In converted films, you see flat
people and flat objects, some closer than
others. We could call it 2.1D.
Cameron says that, with scenes
showing the Titanic itself, he had to
rein in his team and reduce the amount
of added 3D, because otherwise the ship
looked like a miniature. Yes, but it was a
miniature, wasn’t it?
Samsung
Adopts Tubes
Well, why not? There is a booming
business in making boomboxes for use
with iPhones, iPads and other mobile
devices.
The DA-E750 is a nifty-looking miniature
sound system, whose top-mounted
round window gives you a glimpse of its
glowing tubes. The tubes, by the way, are
for the $800 device’s preamplifier section.
The three amplifiers (including one for
the “powerful” subwoofer) are solid state.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 79
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