DuPont meet Dainippon, Dainippon meet DuPont

Not really known for being a big player in the consumer electronics world, DuPont just entered into a strategic partnership with Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Co., Ltd. The goal is to create a more affordable manufacturing process for printed organic light-emitting diode displays. DuPont is usually associated with industries ranging from agriculture to health care. However, they do have a top-notch plastics division and awesome manufacturing know-how. The leap into the OLED arena isn't that far of a stretch. OLEDs use thin films of emissive organic materials — right up DuPont's alley.

Continue reading for more details on what this means for us.

Compact Disc: 44.1k, or 45rpm?

Did you miss the Futuresonic 2008 Festival this year? If so, you also missed Aleks Kolkowski's seminar during the Urban Festival of Art, Music, and Ideas. Mr. Kolkowski is using a vintage record cutting lathe to create 45rpm records on your own recycled CDs. What a great way to recycle those old Milli Vanilli discs! He can also carve up your old DVDs too. I wonder what he can do with an HD DVD disc?

Singing in the...Sink?

Leave it to an Italian design company to turn something as mundane as brushing your teeth into art. Musical and visual art, at that. The WET design firm with a creative flare when dealing with plumbing (get it,... wet?...) has come out with a gorgeous new sink, the X-light Surround, complete with an input for your portable audio player. Talk about an iPod dock -- your toothbrush and Nano, side by side at last. The X-light Surround has built in speakers, visible through the transparent PMMA acrylic polymer surface. Just don't let your Shuffle shimmy into the sink. Wanna see more slippery ideas from WET?

OLED: Live Fast, Die Young

Without question, Sony's XEL-1 is one sweet TV. Its OLED display, the first in a commercially available TV, is wafer thin, its colors are vibrant, and the contrast ratio is outstanding. Be sure to see it, and don't wait too long. Because it might not last very long. The knock on active matrix organic light emitting technology (AMOLED), aside from its staggering expense ($2,500 for the 11-inch XEL-1), is its relatively short lifespan compared to traditional displays. Sony stated that the XEL-1 should last about 30,000 hours. Good, not great, but acceptable. Not so fast there, spanky - that's what market research firm DisplaySearch is saying...

Criterion Collection turns Blu

Take a peek at what news was waiting in my mailbox this morning. Criterion Collection is finally entering the Blu-ray market. While initially waiting it out on the sidelines until the pendulum finally swung away from HD DVD, the company known for releasing art house movies is turning to Blu-ray for their 1080p releases. Even better news for collectors, the Blu-ray releases will not cost any more than their standard DVD versions. We'll have to wait until October, but with titles including The Last Emperor and The Man Who Fell to Earth, the wait will be worthwhile. No word yet on what audio codec(s) they'll use, but expect it to be one of the high-resolution formats. Read below for the entire newsletter. Oh - and sign up for your own copy of the newsletter to get $10 off a $60 order placed before May 26th.

You Can Never be TOO Thin...

According to news out of Korea, the new LG Scarlet TV is the world's thinnest TV. Well, at 45mm thick, it  is quite thin. But the thinnest model in the world? Not so fast, Ms. Scarlet. In a scene that could play out behind the scenes at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, others are stepping forward to say that THEY are the thinnest, in particular - Hitachi's new line that's about to launch in the US. Hitachi's UltraThin 1.5 line converts to, if my math is right, 38.1mm. In a quick backstage alteration of phrasing, LG has changed their tune, rather quickly...

Media-Go-Round

Anyone heading to Japan anytime soon? If so, could you pick up one of these for me? Sony's released two versions of this new VAIO media server, with a whopping 1TB or 1.5TB of storage. Looks kinda like a whopper too. The 1TB model, VGF-HS1 will retail (for now, only in Japan) for $570, and the 1.5TB VGF-HS1S streets for $760. That's plenty of room to store HD videos to display on your Sony (or any other) HDTV. The distinctive shape is designed to match the VAIO TP1 home theater system. Behind that sleek facade lies inputs for all sorts of formats.  Wanna see what they play?

Blu in a Box

You know that keen DVD-powered Home Theater in a Box you got for Christmas? It is my solemn duty to tell you that it has been superseded. HTiBs have been a hot category for years, mainly equipped with DVD head units, but more and more companies are pulling the DVD drives and replacing them with Blu-ray. I suspect that days are numbered for any DVD HTiB priced more than $700. All the high-priced HTiB action is on BD. Case in point is Panasonic's first Blu-ray HTiB, the SC-BT100.

Kudos to KURO

If black is the new black, then Pioneer is just about the hippest manufacturer in town. While their previous models of KURO plasmas were the talk of the town, the newest models, the Elite PDP-5020FD and PDP-6020FD can produce even blacker blacks, the ultimate test for any plasma display. Pioneer has said that these new Elite screens produce blacks that are five times deeper than previous 2007 models. Smarter than the average TV, the KURO has a calibration system called Optimum Mode that adjusts both audio and video settings based on the video and ambient lighting to optimize performance of movies, sports and even news, with dialogue enhanced and background sounds downplayed. Need more details?

Elite Blu

Not long ago, the Big News was Blu-ray versus HD DVD. Now, it's all about the avalanche of new Blu-ray players. Everyone loves a winner. Pioneer has jumped into the fray with not one, but two new BD players: the BDP-05FD and the BDP-51FD. Both are, in a sense, old-school products - heavy on sound and video quality, while sacrificing some of the latest bells and whistles. In particular, neither player will support the latest Hot Button Technology, BD-Live and its interactive possibilities. Still, both of these BonusView players have a lot to offer, and will push the Blu-ray envelope a bit further down the road. In particular, both players will decode multichannel audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD and DTS HD Master (note: some firmware updates needed). The other welcome news is speed. Some BD players are sooooo slow. These are promising 15 seconds from Eject to Off, and 22 seconds to load a disc. And, there's more.