technology on technabob...

The folks over at PlayEngine are offering a 19″ widescreen LCD with a case made from Bamboo. Perfect for your tropical or jungle-themed room (are you listening Elvis?), the set actually has fairly decent specs, with a 1440 x 900 resolution and 8ms refresh rate. Inputs are provided for VGA, composite and S-video, but no DVI. It’s Priced at

Display-makers Sony Corporation and Samsung Electronics announced today that they have signed a deal to build a massive new LCD production facility capable of manufacturing 46 and 50 inch LCD displays. The new facility can crank out up to six 50″ or eight 46″ LCD panels from a single glass sheet. Their prior facility maxed out at 46″…

This week, Kensington Computer Products announced a very cool new FM transmitter for iPods. What’s unique about this model is that it’s the first to use the Radio Data System (RDS) to transmit and display song titles and artist information to car stereos that support this technology. Over 80% of new car radios so support this technology, and now you can take advantage of it too…

Toshiba has delayed the release of the first HD DVD recorder until the end of July as a result of inventory shortages of some components. The launch was originally slated for release in Japan on July 14 and is now set for July 27.
Once released, the recorder will support storage of up to 130 hours of HD content on its internal terabyte hard drive, and will be priced at 398,000 Japanese Yen (appx…

Microsoft wants you to have an 80’s style arcade party for free, complete with Pizza, free arcade game downloads and free 80’s tunes.
Simply send an e-mail with your Xbox Live Gamertag to xlmail@microsoft.com, subject: “Arcade Party,” and Microsoft will get you your free stuff including a Papa Johns pizza, 1000 Xbox Live gamer points (for downloading Live!..

According to this post at Kotaku, UMD format movies have been pulled from the shelves at Target stores this week. The format has struggled for acceptance amid sluggish sales of the only device that can currently play the format, the Sony PSP…

Sega of America has announced the release of it’s mech-combat game, Chromehounds for the Xbox 360. The game features 13 multiplayer modes and Xbox Live support for up to 20 players…

This could be a huge breakthrough (if the manufacturers will adopt it, that is…)
The Nikkei Net Interactive reported over the weekend that Ricoh is working on a single device which can play both Blu-Ray and HD DVD disks.
The device is a diffraction plate which, when placed between the laser and lens, allows for the width of the laser beam to be adjusted…

From the “early adopters get screwed” file… The folks over at MaxConsole have received copies of an anonymous and a (fuzzy) image of a purported HDMI port on what looks sort of like the back on an Xbox 360 MOBO. While having a digital A/V port would be a nice addition to today’s only true HD console, I’m not holding my breath.You be the judge…