Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

There may be some good economic news after all.  During an industry webcast yesterday, the Consumer Electronic Association predicted sales in certain gadget categories will rise despite the gloomy economy.  Flat panel TVs and gaming hardware should do well during the holiday shopping season they predict. 

The reason?  The CEA says people will ride out the stormy economy at home rather than going out to seek entertainment in an effort to save money and fight rising gas prices.  Since so many people will now be homebodies, they’ll turn to their TVs, game consoles and portable game machines such as the PSP and Nintendo DS for entertainment. 

MORE »

Our TV loving friends from Japan will surely not run out of LCD TV choices thanks to Sharp, who has just unveiled not just one but twenty-two new LCD’s in their RX5, GX5 and DS5 series.

The RX5 series will be available in 65, 52 and 46-inches. These LCD’s tout a total contrast ratio of 20000:1 and 450cd/m2 brightness. They will come in full HD glory with 120GHz panel and 12bit BDE image processor. LCD’s falling under Sharp’s GX5 series will have full HD and HD ready panels with sizes ranging from 26-inches up to 52-inches, a 120Hz ASV panel and contrast ratio of 2000:1 with 450cd/m2 brightness. And finally we have the DS5 series which will come in three full HD models with 32-inch up to 42-inch sizes. These LCD’s will come with 2000:1 contrast ratio and a brightness of 450cd/m2, however the 120Mhz ASV panel will not be included in this series feature lineup.

And now for the biggest news of all? These Sharp LCD’s will be preloaded with a tuned Yahoo! page to give you quick access to Yahoo! right in your spanking new Sharp LCD. This is courtesy of Sharp and Yahoo! Japan’s partnership. Pricing information, release date and details of whether these LCD’s will be shipped internationally are not yet available.

Via [Akihabara News]

• Dell’s Black Friday 2008 ads leaked
• Sharp TV Christmas Tree in Grand Central
• T-Mobile brings the Sidekick iD back, priced at just $50

As someone who hasn’t been watching TV for more than a year now in favor of my gadgets (especially the handhelds) I can see where Research and Markets’s recent report is coming from. According to this new report, there are going to be more multimedia phones sold than TV sets this year. You can see evidence of this just by walking down the street. You don’t see a lot of people walking with TV sets in their pockets now, don’t you? All jokes aside though, as that is not the case with cellphones and handhelds in general, most people can even afford to carry more than one handset with them everyday. Also, I think another reason for this is because mobile phones in general, not just multimedia-enabled ones, are now a commodity. And most households only really need one TV set for the entire home, while everyone in the family needs their own, individual mobile handset.

Via [IntoMobile] Via [Textually]

• Verizon employees suspended for accessing Obama’s call records
• iPhone is number 1 in mobile ads
• Who’s On Crack in tech: 11.21.08 edition