The photo above exposes what is called the “ghost fleet of the recession” and was shown on Mail Online where hundreds of ships were shown on anchor off the straits of Singapore simply rusting. There is a large amount of excess slack in shipping. The number of ships lie at anchor east of Singapore and is bigger than the US and British navies combined! There is no crew, cargo or destination.
Vesseltracker.com provides a real time ship tracker function that can be used by Google Earth. I loaded the data file and took at look at China and in particular the Nanjing area where a lot of LCD panels are modularized. LG Display has a LCD module factory in Nanjing and recently Sharp has been in talks with China Electronics Corp. (CEC) to build a G8 TFT LCD fabrication plant there. Let’s take a look. (more…)
StreetInsider.com: Sharp announced on September 16, 2009 the development of a new method of precisely aligning liquid crystals (LCs) used in LCDs to improve contrast and save energy. UV2A is a photo-alignment technology that will be a world’s first and will be incorporated into Sharp’s next-generation ASV (Advanced Super View) TFT LCD panels that will be manufactured at the company’s TFT LCD fabrication plants located in Sakai (G10) and Kameyama (Plant No. 2, G8). Is UV2A the technology that will help Sharp to sell more TV sets?
Sharp’s UV2A technology is a combination of a special material that responds to UV (ultraviolet) radiation, UV exposure equipment and processing technologies. Changing the direction of the UV radiation changes the alignment of the LC molecules, which are about two nanometers in size. The UV radiation has a control parameter at the picometer level so the LCs can be precisely aligned. With precise LC alignment light leakage, a common problem for LCDs that makes black a mere dark gray, can be greatly reduced improving contrast. Sharp’s new technology also has the potential to improve aperture ratios, in other words more light can come through from the backlight. This in turn has a lot of benefits: the company can use lower-power backlights for the same level of brightness or increase the overall brightness by using the same power backlights. By using a lower-power backlight the LCD TV set can consume much less power.
Here is a list of potential benefits from Sharp’s UV2A technology:
The UV2A photo-alignment technology can be considered a breakthrough in precisely controlling LC alignment that will give Sharp an advantage in improving manufacturing efficiency, improved costs and better performing LCDs. Sharp’s technology leadership in many areas of LCD manufacturing has not ever been in jeopardy but there must be something done with the perception of the brand. Sharp’s market share is just in the mid-single digits in North America; the company will need to spend a considerable sum in marketing dollars to bring the brand up to the levels of Samsung, LG, and Sony.
The video is in Japanese.
Really Thin Sony‘s NW-A840 is the company’s thinnest Walkman at just 7.2mm thick (about 0.28-inch). That’s pretty thin considering the svelte-looking Zune HD has a thickness of 8.9mm–downright fat compared to the NW-A840. The iPod touch is a bit thinner than the Zune HD at 8.5mm, still quite a bit thicker than the thinnest aluminum-encased Walkman. (more…)
The Compaq LA2405wg from HP is focused on two things: providing comfort and being green. The LA2405wg sports a 24-inch TN TFT LCD panel with a 1920 x 1200 resolution. Other specs include:
Symmetrical The 300 cd/m2 of brightness is fairly standard and should provide enough brightness for most business applications. The static contrast ratio of 1000:1 is excellent while the 3000:1 dynamic contrast ratio means little. The 5ms on/off response time is about average. Because the LA2405wg uses a TN TFT LCD panel… (more…)
Apple claimed the new iPod touch was faster than the old one by 50%. Let’s see.
Compared to the old iPod touch (MacWorld tests):
Looking at the results of these tests certainly seem to confirm about a 50% speed increase.
Source: The iPhone Blog
Here’s a Zune HD commercial that touts it as “Portable Perfection”. The highlights include: HD Radio, Watch Video (480 x 272 resolution screen), Wireless, Games. So if the Zune HD is perfect then that means the iPod touch is, well, not. Let’s take a look at each of these highlights and compare them to the iPod touch’s.
Photo Courtesy: Akihabara News
Toshiba (Japanese) → Akihabara News: Hitachi threw down the gauntlet and introduced 25 new LCD TVs on September 16, 2009. Of the 25, I will focus on just one series–the ZX9000 that come in two sizes: 46-inch (46ZX9000) and 55-inch (55ZX9000). The ZX9000 series LCD TVs sport a 120Hz LED backlit IPS (In-Plane Switching) TFT LCD, a 500GB HDD, and LAN connectivity.
I am guessing the 500GB HDD is used for personal video recording duties while the LAN connectivity pulls content from the Internet via a video store (?). The 120Hz frequency should help combat motion blur (240Hz would almost completely get rid of it) while the LED backlight technology will undoubtedly endow the ZX9000 series with a slim profile.
Sharp against Samsung: “In the Matter of Certain Liquid Crystal Display Modules, 337-634″
Samsung against Sharp: “In the Matter of Certain Liquid Crystal Display Devices and Products Containing Same, 337-631″
Two Year Fight Sharp sued Samsung for LCD patient infringement. Just another twist in the two-year long fight between the two LCD TV brands. If Sharp wins Samsung can be barred from selling its LCD TVs in the US. The six-member US International Trade Commission (ITC) based in Washington DC said on September 16 that Samsung violated four of Sharp’s patents and ordered both companies to submit arguments as to whether an import ban should be imposed. Let me guess what the two companies will say: Samsung will say no to the ban pointing to a negative impact on the already weak US economy with the company having about 20% of the market and stating that consumers will be left without a clear option if Samsung LCD TVs were not available. Sharp would say yes to the ban because it violates the company’s patent. (more…)
Envy 13: US$1699, 13.3-inch LCD with a 1366 x 768 resolution, 400 cd/m2 of brightness, 3.74 pounds, 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 GPU with 512MB RAM, 250GB hard drive, an external DVD-RW drive.
Envy 15: $1799, 15.6-inch LCD with either 1366 x 768 or 1920 x 1080 resolutions, 5.18 pounds, Intel Core i7 CPU, up to 16GB RAM, an external DVD-RW (Blu-ray drive optional).
Imitation I’ll just come right out and say it: HP pretty much copied the design of Apple’s MacBook Pro notebook PCs for its Envy 13 and 15. HP, with its Envy 13 and 15, is showing its sincerest form of flattery. There are some minor differences: The chassis material is slightly different with a fusion of aluminum and magnesium that has been anodized several layers deep for durability, scratch-resistance and lightweight. Incredibly the metallic chassis takes only a few minutes to manufacture that is considerably faster than the previous design that took an hour. As you know Apple uses a slab of aluminum. Let’s compare. (more…)
Photo courtesy: Engadget (I took the liberty of cropping, changing it to black & white, adding a bit of saturation, increasing contrast and reducing the exposure just a bit.)
Engadget: At first glance I thought the new EX495 was just an updated home server from HP. The EX495 replaces the EX487 (and the slower EX490 replaces the EX485). But I looked closer and realized this is a gem, with a price to match. The EX495 sports an Intel Dual Core CPU, 2GB of RAM and four HDD cages that can handle 2TB drives each for a total of 8TB. The actual data you get to use is 7TB due to the redundancy overhead. If that was all the goodies packed into the updated home server the EX495 wouldn’t be much news. The interesting parts are software.
Software Here’s a quick list of new software capabilities:
The Video Converter will save so much time and for that lone the EX495 is worth a serious consideration if you have a bunch of video files to store and backup in a safe place. Of course, if you have an iPhone or iPod touch the iStream app makes getting to your multmedia collection that much easier! I’m guessing it’ll work with Apple TV too.
DisplayBlog is written and produced by Jin Kim. Subscribe via RSS.