The new Samsung LCD panel will feature 2,000 nits of brightness, making it 33% brighter compared to the previous brightest digital information display (DID) display (1,500nit) available, and it has been specially designed to optimally accommodate the wide range of lighting conditions affecting outdoor displays. Samsung hops that their new DID will be used as digital signs for transit centers, bus shelters, museums, and for the outside of retail centers, helping phase out less noticeable poster advertisements. I wonder which is more environmentally friendly in the long run though - while posters do take paper to create and they can only be used once, DIDs tend to suck up plenty of juice.

According to Samsung, their new “super bright” DID panel is able to generate four times the brightness of a typical LCD TV today, and boasts a unique brightness control feature that enables that allows outdoor advertisers to lower the brightness level at night to the level of a conventional HDTV. Sounds pretty fine and dandy - that means one will also be able to reduce the amount of power consumed. Local dimming technology incorporated within lets the new panel increase its dynamic contrast ratio up to 200,000:1. Other features of this new DID display include full HD (1080p) screen resolution, the ability to show off a stunning 16.7 million colors and a wide viewing angle of 178 degrees. It weighs just 80kgs, and can be used in either landscape or portrait formats.

Press Release

It's not every day that you get to check out the world's thinnest LCD HDTV, let alone all three "ultrathins" currently in production, but that's what's going down. Sharp's super insane new flagship, the Limited Edition Aquos LC-65XS1U-S, arrived at my door in a bulletproof shipping container, 138 pounds of metal and glass measuring 65 inches diagonal that you can barely see from the side. Yes, in spite of its full-frontal gravitas, it measures only an inch thick at its edge, and a slightly more flexed 2 inches in the middle. It's gorgeous and ridiculous and designed to hang on a wall with no more protrusion than a dainty sketch in a frame—only it can blast Casino Royale at 1080p, 24 frames per second, while your face melts, and I'd have to sell my car twice over to buy it.

I love you Giz readers too much to stop with something that none of us can actually afford—and if you can afford it, you'll be decent enough to not let us know—so I called in the new slender 1080p models from Hitachi and JVC, too. As much lower-priced sets, I thought they'd just be the icing on Sharp's Limited Edition cake, but they turned out to be, in their own right, fine specimens. Let's review, shall we?

Who Thin?
"Ultrathin" is best defined, at this moment, as a TV that is mostly thinner than 2 inches.

Hitachi's Director's Series 1.5 UltraThin UT37X902 (37 inches listing for $1,900) got its name because it's an inch and a half thick across its entire panel. It is a monitor with speakers, but no tuner and the barest of inputs—one HDMI and one VGA—to help it keep trim. JVC's LT-46SL89 (46 inches for $2,400) on the other hand is a true TV, with digital HD tuner, 3 HDMI ports, 2 analog inputs with option of component, composite or S-Video, and a PC VGA input. That adds a bit to the girth—while most of its main panel is one-and-three-quarter-inches thick, there's a middle section that is a fat three inches.

To give you a sense of comparison, Pioneer's fairly slim and lightweight first-gen Kuro plasma is nearly 4 inches thick, with a slimming bezel that measures about half that. Pioneer isn't content there, though—its newest Kuro Elite monitors are quite trim, and you'll recall last CES the company showed off an unbelievably thin half-inch plasma screen that's presumably nowhere near production.

WTF Thin?
When I asked Sharp Aquos product manager Tony Favia what the fuss was about all of these new super thin TVs, he said that customers, particularly high-end ones, wanted a TV that could hang on a wall as flush as art, and even fill in for art as needed. That's why Sharp loaded the XS1 with paintings: When you push "Image" on the remote, up pop masterworks by Hokusai, Renoir, Seurat and Van Gogh, about 10 or 12 total. You can't leave the TV set on a particular image, though, despite the remote's discreetly stashed Play/Pause/Fwd/Rew transport buttons.

The XS1 achieves its thinness in part by farming out its functionality: An accompanying AV box, tethered by a single long HDMI cable, doesn't just handle all of the inputs, but the digital tuner and AquosNet internet access as well. It's so integrated into the TV's life that without it that, though I was able to run a video source directly, I couldn't even touch picture settings.

The thing about thin is that it's not cheap, and as such, manufacturers aren't at liberty to cut out performance to slim down the screen. This is probably why the biggest successes in TV sales—Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and LG—haven't expressed outright interest in marketing slim product. In fact, Sharp is smarter than JVC and Hitachi, aiming the thin concept at particularly spendy customers (Russian oil barons, professional golfers, Alaskan governors who may soon sign book and/or TV deals), rather than just going thin to differentiate itself at the Best Buy.

You Can't Afford It
The sleek all-metal Sharp 65-inch XS1 Limited Edition costs $16,000. The 52 incher costs $11,000. The build materials have a lot to do with the cost. A critically acclaimed, plastic-encased 3.7-inch thick Pioneer 50-inch plasma (that weighs 13 fewer pounds) lists for around $4,000, and sells for as little as $2,500. So you're not a sheikh, I'm not a sheikh, why are we talking about a sheikh's TV? Favia said the company went for a "no compromise" approach, and as hard as I looked, I found just one technical compromise, one most (sheikhs) could live with. If the damn thing didn't cost so much, the XS1 would be one of my favorite TVs ever.

Speaking of the Kuro, I placed a first-gen model side-by-side to calibrate and compare, and though the Sharp LCD wasn't always as perfect as the Pioneer plasma, I was surprised to see how well it kept up. Even though the LCD is equipped with 120Hz Fine Motion Enhanced blur reduction, I realized that during the action sequences in Casino Royale it went with native 24p (24-frames-per-second) movie playback. There wasn't any noticeable blur. In fact, thanks to the massive LCD's dazzlingly snappy 4-millisecond response time, I found that you really didn't need 120Hz at all.

Contrast Is King
In the all-important land of contrast, this Sharp scores big. Sharp's performance in mainstream LCD isn't exactly legendary, and critics come down on them for confusing contrast with an overuse of darkness. The XS1 is obviously a ground-up redesign, but in that arena in particular, I found I could tweak settings to walk the line between crushed and bleached blacks. You don't see charcoal gray when you're supposed to see pitch black, and yet dark textures are plainly visible.

This has much to do with the tight grid of RGB LEDs behind the main panel that light only what's needed. This technique has recently earned Sony and Samsung high praise for contrast and color reproduction, but it has a third crazy attribute: The 65-inch Sharp is capable of using less energy than the 46-inch JVC and even the 37-inch Hitachi, because it lights only what it needs and doesn't require the constant glare of a fluorescent light source.

When it comes to specific wattage demands, the Sharp hovered in the low to mid 100s with peaks upwards of 200W. The plasma was averaging 250 or higher, maxing out during the brightest scenes at 400W. The JVC's 46 incher could be set, using the backlight slider, anywhere from 98W to 200W, and the Hitachi similarly ranged from 83W to 171W. Though nice and slim, both of these sets use constantly lit fluorescent lamps.

While contrast on these smaller TVs didn't immediately seem as good, I got a sneaking suspicion that LED backlighting is, at least in part, a psychological trick. See, constant FL light means that, when watching 2.35:1 widescreen movies, you get a touch of gray in the bars at top and bottom, at least you do unless you dial down the backlight and sacrifice some whiteness. With LED backlighting, the LEDs behind the letterbox's black bars are simply turned off. You perceive that contrast to be better since there are fewer dead giveaways of less-than-perfect contrast.

I'm not trying to uncover a mystery here; I'm just saying that once I ignored the light shining through the black bars, I was happy enough with the contrast and color—demonstrated below by Disney's new Sleeping Beauty Blu-ray, our friend HD Guru Gary Merson's favorite color-gamut test source along with, naturally, Southland Tales—on both the JVC and Hitachi. Sometimes "good enough" is actually "good."

The Last LCD Issue
The funny thing is that two of the three test TVs suffered from an annoying LCD-related problem, and it wasn't the cheaper two. Both the Sharp and the JVC, which in many ways could not be more different as TVs, lost color saturation and even shifted in tint when viewed from the most peripheral angles.

Viewing angle issues are far from new: Projection TVs and LCDs have continued to suffer from them for years and years (in some cases decades). And maybe you think that it's no big deal, since most people watch a TV sitting head on. But I think that ultrathin TVs—intended to hang flush on walls, and without a pivoting mount—should be especially good looking at every angle where the picture is remotely visible. The Hitachi alone managed to hold its colors to the very edge, losing only brightness, as you'd expect.

New Hope
In the end, I think this review session did more to renew my faith in LCD technology than it did to sell me on the whole ultrathin thing. I spent years at line shows wondering why anyone would buy an LCD when plasma was an alternative, and even the amazing rise of Sony and Samsung in the LCD space was clouded by the simultaneous rise of all those extra-crappy savings-club TVs.

It's worth noticing that these ultrathin sets don't hail from the current Korean, Japanese or Chinese TV powerhouses. As flagships from three respectable but struggling tier-2 brands, they do an even better job boding well for the whole industry, at least from a technical perspective. Plasma can still enjoy its high noon, but at a cost—nothing here looked better than the Kuro, but it took twice the energy to deliver that marginally better picture. And when it comes to hanging these bastards on the wall, well, let's see if Pioneer's still going to make good on that ultra-ultrathin promise from last CES. If not, these LCDs are going to be the slim-o-cizers to beat. That is, until the first 40-inch OLEDs hit the market. [Sharp Aquos Limited Edition XS1; Hitachi 1.5; JVC SuperSlim]

These days hi-def videocams are all the rage so, you could be forgiven for thinking that standard definition cameras are on their way out. Odd choice then the FS100 – it’s a new budget-priced standard definition model that competes with some low end HD videocams on price and which is not all that far away from the likes of the Sanyo Xacti on price.

I confess that I am a Canon man – I use Canon slrs, a Canon digital compact and a Canon DV-cam. I like the quality of Canon glass too. So, I was looking forward to getting my hands on the FS100 because I am considering moving to solid state media for video. How does it compare?

The Canon FS100 camcorder

What's in the box?

• Canon FS100
• Li-ion rechargeable battery
• Charger
• Remote control
• AV cable
• USB cable
• Wrist strap
• Printed instruction manual
• Software CD

General

The FS100 is one of a range of three cameras, being at the bottom end of that range with no built-in memory and relying solely upon SDHC cards for recording. It is very definitely aimed at the casual user rather than the demanding amateur.

In the hand it looks smart with its two-tone brushed aluminium and polished chrome finish. It’s light and well-balanced with a conventional videocam format that we’re all familiar with. It’s not particularly compact and is more suited to handbag than the pocket, but it’s not overly bulky either.

Controls

Controls: there’s lots of them and they are liberally strewn around the chassis. I would go so far as to say that the design is a bit fussy when it comes to controls and not as elegant as it could be.

The Canon FS100 controls

Left: Easy mode select, battery info/display info, USB2.0 port, external mic' input, AV out

Rear: Mode select rotary switch (stills record, video record, stills review, video review), video record

Top: Power ON/OFF switch, still capture, zoom control

Screen: 5-way menu navigator switch, “Func” (Menu activate), video play/pause, video fast forward, video rewind

Below: Battery/SDHC card slot cover, tripod socket

Front: Built-in stereo microphones, video light/led

Canon FS100 Specification:

• Effective pixel count: Stills: 800k pixels. Movies: 710k pixels
• CCD: 1/6^th"
• Recording media: SD or SDHC Memory Card (Up to 8GB)
• Still resolution (pixels): 1152 x 864, 1152 x 648, 640 x 480
• Focal length: 2.6mm – 96.2mm
• Movie: 41 - 1877 mm (on a 35 mm camera), stills: 41.5 – 1536mm, f/2.5 (W) – 5.2 (T)
• Focus range: 10mm - infinity
• Shutter speed: 1/2000^th – 1/6^th sec’
• Still: 1/2 sec ~ 1/2000 sec. (Flash: 1/30 ~ 1/2000 sec., Lamp mode: max 4 secs)
• Optical zoom: 37x
• Digital zoom: 45x (known as advanced), 2000x
• Focus: TTL auto focus, manual focus
• Scene Selector: Auto, Sports, Portrait, Landscape, Night, Snow, Beach, Sunset, Spotlight, Fireworks
• Self timer: 2sec - 10 sec
• White balance: Full Auto TTL
• Manual: Fine/Cloud/Fluorescent/Incandescent
• Flash: None
• Audio microphone: Built-in stereo
• Monitor: 2.7-inch TFT Colour Widescreen LCD display. Approximately 123,000-pixels
• Video output interface: Component Video
• Power source: Lithium-ion battery BP-808, charging AC adapter included)
• Dimensions: 58mm x 124mm x 60mm (W x D x H)
• Weight: 260g

Highlights:

• Light
• Uses SDHC cards
• Good battery life
• Feels solid

Lowlights:

• Standard definition – not much cheaper than high-definition
• Average image quality
• No flash
• No conventional viewfinder
• Poor low-medium light picture quality

REVIEW

Positioned on top of and at the rear of the camera, the power switch is not immediately obvious as it blends into the chrome finish facia. There’s no colouring to it at all. Power on is very quick with the camera being ready to film in less than 3 seconds. Powering on also opens the noisy shutter protecting the lens with a satisfying click (no separate lens cap required). Depending upon the mode-selector switch position you will find yourself in one of 4 modes: stills capture, video capture, stills review or video review. Shooting video is simply a case of then pressing the big shiny button with a red dot on it at the rear of the body.

Taking stills is done by pressing a chrome button on the top of the camera just below the zoom control. It didn’t fall to hand readily for me and I think it’s too close to the zoom which could result in the zoom being actuated instead. If you are shooting from the hip then this is not a problem. Generally the ergonomics are not as polished as some other cameras and coming from the Sanyo Xacti I have been spoilt.

The menu system is one of the simpler ones I have come across. Navigation of the menus is done by a fairly typical 5-way navigator switch mounted to the left of the screen. Setting some oft-used and basic parameters took too long and too much navigation to achieve. If this frightens you off then take comfort in the fact that there’s an Easy mode to simplify everything and this is where I mostly found myself anyway and where I suspect most users of this type of camera would be too.

A good touch is the placement of function keys around the screen. This makes a lot of sense when everything is done via the screen interface. However, being of the membrane type, the keys lacked tactile feedback and looked cheap.

Picture quality by day in good light is adequate. In medium to low lighting levels and particularly indoors there is a noticeable coarseness that is also very apparent on the display – the performance under such conditions can best be described as mediocre to poor. This is disappointing because I have always rated Canon performance and I have no complaints whatsoever about the image quality I get from my Canon cameras.

The FS100 has three video recording options. It’s possible to record up to 2½ hrs of MPEG2 video onto a single 4GB SDHC card in LP mode. The higher quality SP mode gives about 1¼ hrs of capacity, and in XP mode it’s about 1 hr. I always used the XP high-quality mode to try to maximise the quality of footage.

There’s three modes of zoom: optical, digital and advanced with 37x, 200x and 45x zoom being available respectively. The 37x optical zoom is generous in comparison to the opposition and the zoom function itself was very speedy and accurate with the control located on the top of the body. The 2000x digital zoom is frankly ridiculous and would destroy image quality totally. I didn’t bother using it. Using the large optical zoom magnified the graininess in images to the point where it became intrusive although, this is not as big a deal as you might imagine because I can’t ever recall using anything like the full 22x optical zoom on my own camcorder.

Image stabilisation is of the inferior digital variety rather than optical that I am used to. For general uses though it is good enough, but it won’t be able to cope with wobble at the long end of the zoom.

As a stills camera don’t expect too much from the FS100 - it has a small CCD sensor with only a limited pixel count of 800k pixels which is nowhere near adequate for anything but modest uses such as web use or display on a monitor. There is no flash and overall it is best reserved for emergency use.

Battery life was excellent and better than all camcorders I have tested so far. I managed about 2¾ hrs in general use which means for a day out it’s not necessary to carry the charger.

You can download a sample video - taken straight from the FS100 memory card with this link.

Conclusion:

The FS100 looks good and feels good, but lets the side down a bit and I would expect more from the likes of Canon. The decent quality does not rescue the Canon from lacklustre filming performance and compared against high-def models costing not much more it suffers. The Canon is not a bad camera, it’s just that there’s quite a few better and more flexible offerings around for not much more money.

Although this is the last camera review in the Camcorder Group Test please come back again soon for my summary of the reviewed devices or head over and look at Part 1 to see which cameras were included or have a look at my Panasonic SDR-S7 review or Sanyo Xacti HD700 review.

Review by: Nigel

[ Post Tags: Canon FS100, camcorder, video cameras, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]

For starters, the Fifty-One electronic cigarette looks and feels like the real thing, making it comfortable to use with long time and new smokers alike. It comes in two components - the first is a rechargeable battery while the other is a disposable cartridge, and inside the latter you will find the nicotine pad and atomizing mechanism. Once the disposable cartridge has outlived its usefulness, all it takes is a simple screw off action and putting on the new and you’re good to go. A major benefit of this mechanism is the atomizer is never reused, so you don’t have to worry yourself even more with other problems including nicotine residue, build-up and clogging. Users will users draw in a “vapor” that is dense enough even to be noticeable when exhaled, although it isn’t classified as smoke, making this useable even in non-smoking areas.

On the bright side, you also won’t need to fork out for tobacco excise taxes and health-impact fees when you pick up the Fifty-One electronic cigarette, and there is no risk of burning anything since no fire is involved. The starter kit will come with a couple of nicotine cartridges (available in various strengths: 8 mg., 6 mg., 4 mg. and 0 mg.), where you can choose from tobacco, menthol, chocolate, vanilla and coffee flavors.

Press Release

"Headphones contain magnets, and some of these magnets are powerful," said Dr. William Maisel, a cardiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He added the usual "it's too late now, bucko" caveat, of course, saying: "I certainly don't think people should overreact to this information."

Worse still, these are magnets we're talking about, so the danger arrives whether your player is powered on or off. Of the 27 people involved in the pacemaker study, four experienced "interference" when headphones were placed within an inch of their chests. One patient had their pacemaker reset. Ten of the 33 patients with implanted defibrillators experience the same interference. Interference is classified as anything from "not noticeable to the patient" to heart palpitations. In the case of the defibrillator, interference could keep the device from administering a life-saving shock.

I will now list some of the tasteless song puns I thought of while writing this post: Shot Through the Heart, Heartbreaker, and the aforementioned Killing Me Softly.. Your turn. [Yahoo News]

The croc in question here, Choppa, was selected for this humiliating assignment because he lost two front teeth while fighting with some other 2,000lb. crocodiles at the Crocosaurus Cove amusement park.

"In the Northern Territory, the saltwater crocodile is an icon and is part of our life. They are always in the news, either in someone's swimming pool or killing someone's favorite horse," said Michael "That's not a knife, this is a knife" Scott, who opened the cage in July.

There have been no fatalities yet, although there are apparently some noticeable gashes in the plastic from the Choppa's remaining teeth. [Daily Mail]

How could we possibly miss the HD content, you ask? Well, it's not marked anywhere as HD. Neither Netflix's site nor the Xbox 360 is showing any discernible "HD" label on content until the moments when clips begin to buffer. Seeing as many of us may choose what we watch based upon the quality of feed, we hope this issue gets addressed soon. Right now it's a "feeling lucky?" situation.

According to Netflix, streaming in HD requires a connection of 8mbps or greater. That's a problem for me as my connection maxes around 5mbps. So while I was still able to stream HD, I was in their second quality tier, not first.
But still, the quality was very good. Compared to Netflix SD streaming, it's much sharper, but maybe even more important, the frame rate is far better. Netflix SD has noticeable breaks in motion, like a web feed. Simple footage I watched in Netflix HD was as smooth as television.

As for sharpness, it looks like compressed HD normally looks. That means it's not as sharp as a good Blu-ray or OTA HD. But it's better than DVD. It looks like a crappy HD movie transfer, actually, somewhere between fine upconversion and best case scenario HD, probably leaning toward upconversion at my second-tier connection speed.

But since buffers take only 15 seconds, I mentally deemed the quality excellent, and definitely light years ahead of Netflix SD streaming.

There is one big catch in the user interface, however. Fast forwarding and rewinding have been completely disabled. Instead, you can only "skip" in 10-minute intervals. Ouch.
Also of note, those who convert HDMI to DVI into non-HDCP compliant displays may have issues (as in, the video will not play). However, all of my streaming was performed fine through component cables, so there are definitely some strange exceptions going on with certification.

So in terms of quality, the most important issue, we're quite pleased with Netflix HD streams so far. But as for supporting features, like fast forwarding and an easy way to differentiate HD content, there's some definite room for improvement.