Philips
 

Philips in HD

Their focus is "Consumer Lifestyles for richer experiences." Philips doesn't believe in just any kind of movie or audio experience, so they went all out with some very swank HDTVs and new screens promised to improve your own personal experience. They've done a pretty darn good job of cleaning up their HDTV's pictures and contrast ratios. Their three newest 7000, 5000, and 3000 series HDTVs offer features like 120hz refresh rates for clearer pictures, 1080P resolution, and "invisible" speaker systems which are actually built inside the chassis with designed "sound traps" that direct the audio out for better quality sound. And of course, their newest series are reported to be more power efficient. Their entire product lines have taken on a more sleek, smoother, feminine, appearance. And it is good! Nice job ladies!

Slim and Sleek

Feminine Facade

A couple new HD or Blu-Ray players offer 5.1 Channel Audio, HDMI, and of course full 1080P support and up conversion. These units won't be cheap right out of the gate, but may cheapen quickly with rumors that Toshiba plans to slash Blu-Ray prices by as much as 40%. The HD 6515 and 7200 are two units I'd love to sample which offer 5.1 HD audio, compact design, full audio performance, and HD play back as well as slimmer shapes. If you want better audio support for your stylish iPhone, the BTN 630 is a stylish docking station that is a multi function station that has a few features that support iPod, USB, MMC, and SD storage. You basically plug your cell phone in the docking station and can listen to music via the speakers. When a call comes in, the music pauses till after the call is completed. And if you feel so inclined, the unit acts as a very, nice speaker phone system.

HD 6515

BTN 630

Compact 7200

Philips Blu-ray

Some of the smaller toys on display included two USB storage drives hidden within a stylish lilac colored  heart shaped crystal for the ladies and a diamond cut pad lock for the guys. This is a growing trend these days with various storage devices being camouflaged within some sort of inconspicuous trinket. The diamond cut lock and lilac active crystal are going to retail from about $79 and $199 respectively.

For The Guys

Classy Ear Pieces

For The Ladies

NVidia

While perusing another booth, yours truly was privileged to finally meet three of probably the most well known names to Nvidia,  Ken Brown, Brian Burke, and Rick Allen. After the introductions, the gentlemen were kind enough to give us a tour of their booths which enlightened us to a lot of what Nvidia has been doing. You might think that Nvidia has the luxury of sitting on their laurels after the successful few years, but that isn't true. The gears of progress command motion.

Hybrid Technology

Their best toy to date is a joint partnership with Samsung in developing a 55" HDTV that offers many of the features associated with the top models: Full HD, 1080P, plenty of HDMI, and a 3D picture to envy. You read correctly, a 55" 3D screen that can be enjoyed by wearing some supporting 3D glasses. Right now, the glasses are betas and resemble some of the ugliest that the military have coined, "birth control" glasses. (They are so ugly, you are almost guaranteed to put the opposite sex to flight.) The picture looks so cool once you've donned the glasses. Call of Duty 4 was really a whole new experience and made me want to play it all over again, assuming they'd let me take the 3D Samsung TV home. You can expect to see something similar in the near future, except for the beta 3D spectacles. Those might be redesigned by someone like Gargoyle or Oakley unless the price tag resembles the names. It's for gaming, so they don't have to be that stylish.

Nvidia's 55" 3-D (LED DLP) 1080P by Samsung

The booth also had several gaming laptops sporting various 8800M series graphics cards that are already out. The two lap tops that caught my eye were the Gateway XP and Sager each with an 8800M graphics card playing Crysis or Call of Duty 4. Now, the Gateway XP comes in at a surprising $1300 which Nvidia repeatedly confirmed. It's system specs were 3GB DDR2 667MHz, 17" Full Widescreen, DVD+RW ROM Drive, WiFi, an excellent graphics enclosure, and plenty of ports for connectivity. For system specs like these, $1300 isn't hard to stomach. Try configuring these features manually at your favorite laptop manufacturer and see what kind of price tag you're quoted. The Sager is very similar in design and configuration, though the price tag is different. We'll take a couple Gateway XPs please.

Gateway FX with 8800M 512MB Graphics

One of Nvidia's latest technologies is Hybrid and Geforce Boost. Hybrid SLI allows a user to switch easily from descrete GPUs to motherboard based GPUs whenever large 3D power isn't necessary. This should save power, cut down on noise, and help with Nvidia's future Micro-ATX High Definition Motherboards. Hybrid SLI with the help of Geforce Boost allows the system to use both your regular graphics card and your integrated motherboard graphics at the same time for 3D graphic intensive performance. The current cards that have the Geforce Boost feature are the 8500 GT and 8400 GS. Of course, you can expect us to thoroughly test this feature the day it arrives just to see how big of a boost.
 

Very Nice!

And alas, the last part of the booth tour involved Nvidia's newest True HD motherboard soon to reach vendors all over. The micro-ATX motherboard comes with High Definition Audio as well as an integrated High Definition Graphics Processor built in to the chipset. The reason is for Home Theater PC users looking for true HD support that can't always be purchased in the graphics card of your choice. Not every Nvidia graphics card has the HD capabilities built in the GPU. The latest 8800 series graphics cards at least do as well as those specifically marked. The motherboards are estimated to cost anywhere from $85 to $110 depending on any extra features offered by vendors.

One of the more beneficial features of having a fully capable integrated HD graphics chip on the micro-ATX is that the processor doesn't have to work at producing HD results. If your system's graphics processor isn't HD capable, then you'll need a pretty strong dual core processor to be able to handle the data execution which means spending more money than needed on a Home Theater or desktop PC. Nvidia's test system didn't require a faster and more expensive Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2 processor to offer really nice HD video. Instead, it had a single core AMD 64 3500+ on the new micro-ATX motherboard. Finally, it looks like HTPCs can be very low cost while supporting HD and Blu-ray.

Sager 8800M Power

What about the next generation graphics cards? Do you want to know what and when is coming out first? We'd love to tell you, but until we get the all clear alarm, we have to keep our word. Until then, expect many 8800 series graphics cards to continue to drop in price and don't be afraid to pick up what I consider to be the Editor's Choice do to performance and price, an 8800 GTS 512MB (G92 GPU) graphics card. Thanks again, Ken, Rick, and Brian!

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