Okay, so it doesn’t actually fly, but it sure looks like a flying saucer, don’t you think? It even has little fold-out landing legs! (Actually, I think maybe it was separated at birth from this thing from Star Wars. Or maybe one of those robots from WALL-E? But I digress.)

This is in reality the OO wireless projector as imagined by designer David Riesenberg. The idea is that it’s the ultimate in projection simplicity, thanks to its sleek, circle-shaped design and its super-portability. It’s powered by an internal Li-Ion battery, allowing it to project for up to 3 hours straight, though it also has a built-in power cord.

Let’s look at some specs. It’ll display high-def video or data at full 1080p resolution, it has its own internal SSD storage capacity, and it’s WiFi enabled so it can stream directly from your computer or any other WiFi source. Riesenberg recommends one use for the OO as an external or secondary display.

As for controlling the device, what else would you expect from something so futuristic but a sexy touchscreen remote control? (And of course, the remote also looks like it could be a spaceship, too.) The whole package has enough exquisite curves and design cool factor to have Steve Jobs mopping up his own drool. All it needs now is the ability to hover.

Unfortunately it’s just a concept at the moment, so you may have to wait a while to get your hands on one. But something this gorgeous deserves to go into production.

Watch Riesenberg’s slick promotional video, and you might just think the darn thing has a soul…

OO – High Definition Wireless Projector from David Riesenberg on Vimeo.

One of the first movies I ever saw that pushed me down the road to geekdom was the original Clash of the Titans movie. I was pretty young when the movie first came out, but it was played so often on the TV that I must’ve watched it 100 times before I turned 10. The at-the-time amazing special effects and Greek hero storyline sucked me in and made me a believer.

The movie featured a lot of big names for the time, including Laurence Olivier. This is the movie that made Harry Hamlin a household name, and through the 80s, he was a pretty big star. Now, not so much. But hey, give the guy a break, there have been bigger Hollywood losers than him.

The big deal with this story though was the special effects. Ray Harryhausen was the stop-motion expert who turned the film into reality, and made those fight scenes with the giant monsters look so realistic. Sure, they were no Star Wars, but they were no Star Trek, either. Put this movie in my top 5 Sci-Fi with old-school FX, along with Flash Gordon.

Well come Tuesday, it’s available on Blu-Ray for the first time. I’m not quite sure how well stop-motion will translate in pixel-perfect clarity, but I, for one, will be adding it to my collection for sure.

Sony recently put out an ace if you had chosen to attach yourself to their technology. As they recently launched their line of 3D capable LED’s (it’s really amazing by the way), you’ll also be able to do 3D gaming if you own a PS3. Apparently, the 3D technology has more to do with hardware than the medium itself — a quick firmware update in the future to your PS3 will allow you to play your games in 3D. I saw a quick demo of several titles including Killzone at the recent 2010 Bravia launch, with the NX800 taking center stage (I just love how they call it the “NX” ala Star Trek) with its “monolithic design” allowing borderless viewing, 3D and a peculiar 6 degree tilt which has been scientifically proven to improve your viewing pleasure by being easy on the eyes.

Locate the LED TV on a higher pedestal and you’re back to the 90 degree angle parallel to the floor. 3D technology is the “next big thing” for LED home entertainment. We’ve advanced from different levels of HD to “televisions as furniture” and finally border-less screens. Buying an NX800 gets you 2 3D glasses in stock: amazing, really. There’s no other way to explain it than by experiencing gaming in 3D. Apparently, if you’re seated on a couch, a 6 degree tilt is the best way to enjoy movies.

The NX800 retails for USD $3,500.00 and for what it offers — the usual bells and whistles of any Internet-enabled television, motion sensor that detect your location and adjusts viewing settings, and yeah 3D. Considering the features, that’s a great price.

Just this week I was contemplating purchasing a webcam to communicate with clients through Skype. I have been working from home recently and find that it takes too much time to email instructions on using Wordpress for example. Now I must note that I’m deaf so the video call conference will still have the person I’m conferencing with to type the messages. But having a face to face meeting will help both sides understand each other better as we humans also depend on facial expression to interpret the meaning of what is being said.

As someone who also depends on lipreading I can imagine that having a HD quality picture of the person I’m communicating with would make it possible to follow the what the person is saying as if we where having a talk face to face instead of through a video conference call. Think about people who communicate through gesture language it would be effortless at the max resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels.

The only downside right now is that HD enabled webcams are just starting to make way on the market and are still expensive considering all the cheaper options of non-HD webcams. It will be a while before HD web cams with embedded H.264 codec chip and processing are widely available at different price ranges. As for a fast computer almost all being sold today are fast enough to handle High Definition video calls over broadband, so it’s a question of time and willingness by the user to be able to video conference in HD quality.

I’m excited about these communication advancements that are breaking down barriers more and more with each new technique and development. And currently I’m willing to wait for this new generation of webcams to be available so I can buy one.

Highlights of the TouchCam N1 are the following:

• Skype Certified
• HD 720P
• H.264
• Dual Mics
• Wide Angle
• Auto Focus
• USB connection

The TouchCam N1 is scheduled to go for sale later this month for the price of 129 dollars. See the product page for more details.

The fact is, manufacturers have crammed so many intensive functions into today’s televisions that high-end processors are a must. Gone are the days of a CRT blindly pushing out a picture one line at a time ad infinitum. These days, every pixel can be controlled on-the-fly to ensure the best picture is produced on our favourite LCD or plasma set.

Now, Cell TV is designed for the high-end TV market, boasting some 143 times more processing power than available in current TV models. It fits with an improved display panel with a Direct LED backlighting system featuring 4,608 LEDs and 512 distinct dimming areas (in other words, more control over light and dark areas in an overall picture and hence a better contrast ratio).

OK, that’s a lot of rhetoric, but one of the interesting applications, which builds on Toshiba’s existing technology, is that of improving the quality of low-res video content.

Yes, TV is going high definition and we have Blu-ray and HD/near-HD downloads, but the fact is that low-quality video, particularly from online sources, is still a reality, and an increasingly popular source of entertainment.

Toshiba’s Resolution+ system reduces the compression artefacts commonly seen when lo-res video is put on a large screen.

Oh, and just to add to the 3DTV mix, the Cell TV processor is powerful enough to handle that, too. Toshiba’s system will also convert 2D video into 3D in near real time. Interesting — if it’s any good it would increase the range of 3D quality material available as consumers wouldn’t have to wait and hope for films and games to be shot in 3D in the first place.

Obviously, how good these systems are remains to be seen. Upscaling and improving SD content is never as good as HD, and pseudo-3D isn’t going to be as good as material shot in 3D in the first place, but it still opens up a wealth of possibilities.

Oh, and just to finish off, Toshiba has promised that LED backlighting will feature in all of its LCD TVs, even the more entry-level ones. That makes sense, given the enormous benefits of LED.

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is definitely bringing up some interesting new display technologies, including Samsung’s transparent AMOLED and more. I just hope these systems, if and when they make it to the general consumer market, can play well together. Toshiba’s Cell TV is expected to arrive towards the end of 2010.

You’d have to be pretty strong to do this, as not only do you have the weight of the hardware but also need a power pack.

This definitely works best at night (and presumably not when it’s raining!) because, bright though the projected image may be, it’s not going to look quite so good during the day.

The projector can display an image up to 318 inches (that’s 26.5 foot) diagonally. Pretty impressive and great for showing off on the sides of buildings.

Outside projection still has a definite cool factor, even though it’s so easy, but this takes things that little bit further.

I hope he packed his energy drinks.

Epson Extreme Gamer

The Sony HDR-TG5V is one definitely to crave for. I like how 6-hours of video can fit into this small “toy”. Oh I could almost imagine the comfort of not having to download to my Macbook every time I needed more space. And the comfort of slipping it into my jacket, or even my pant’s sidepockets too. It beats those clunky and huge handicams by several shots.

There is no firm word on pricing yet and I’m not even sure if this would be available at Prime Outlets too (though I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that). There are rumors that it will sell well around the US$1,000 mark.

Anyway, check out the Sony website for more details.

In what can only be called another example of its power, China has launched its own High Definition standard, HD NVD, thus escaping any licensing fees.

The HD NVD standard has been realized with support from exclusively Chinese companies and the Chinese Government. Technically HD NVD will offer discs up to 12GB and still make use of the more classic red lasers. Because red lasers, known from CD players and DVD players, are used manufacturing will be possible in existing factories thus reducing production costs massively.

Biggest problem with this new standard will be the movie studios. Will they allow their content to be released on this platform in China? Then again, they might as well collaborate with the Chinese Government because otherwise they will find their products on the black market. But are they _that_ smart already?

Via Numerama (French).

Roku is a set-top box that plays Netflix movies. The box itself costs about $100. It enables you to watch unlimited “instant” movies via the Netflix service for less than $10 per month. Unfortunately, the movie selection available for “instant” viewing over the Internet leaves something to be desired.

If it weren’t for XBox 360 relationship with Netflix, the sheer quality of this product would bring me to predict marketshare dominance for Roku. However, that remains to be seen, given the current market penetration that XBox 360 has.

Getting Roku setup was a breeze. It took me all of 3 minutes (including the unboxing!). The user menus feel intuitive and tight. Using Roku reminded me of using the Nintendo Wii – family friendly. To watch movies you just add movies to your “Instant” queue in Netflix and these movies automatically appear on your Roku system.

After getting the Roku setup, I watched about 10 minutes from a few different movies. The picture quality is basically like watching a DVD. It’s alright, but on an HDTV you wish it was a little better. Given that this is a first generation product, that’s not bad though. The biggest frustration was the load time which was sometimes up to 30 seconds.

While the movie selection isn’t great, there are some good movies available on Netflix for instant viewing on the Roku box. There are thousands of movies to download but most of them are older movies. There are some recent releases, and some that are excellent. But, for the most part, the movies you really want to see just aren’t available for viewing using Roku and Netflix.

At the end of the day, I see Roku as proof of concept for the mechanism of subsription based online video distribution. Up until now, our only choices have been to pay per movie or to sacrifice quality and download movies for free (often illegally). Roku shows us the promise of IP based movie watching on our HDTVs … and that’s exciting!

Ryan blogs his thoughts on pop-culture at Thrive and is a co-founder of CC Matcher.