Forget schools, forget lighting, forget easy access to drinking water... it's that sweet TV goodness that people living off the grid really need. Well, that and laptops. You're looking at Sharp's 26-inch LCD prototype which uses just a quarter of the power (or a third measured annually) of a conventional CRT with the same screen size. That's low enough to be suitably powered by a Sharp, triple-junction thin-film solar cell module whose surface area is roughly equivalent to that of the LCD screen. Sharp hopes to market the two items as a pair in a bid to "contribute to the environment." Good thing too, 'cause nothing fills a billion empty bellies like an eye-full of boob-candy.

[Via Impress]

In case you didn't get the message, Sony's due sooner-rather-than-later 27-inch OLED is going to be priced for the Mark Cubans, Bill Gates' and other people not you of the world, at least for the next couple of years. Even with recent massive investments, U.S. head Stan Glasgow tells CNET OLEDs in the future could be seen as a premium alternative to LCDs, but don't expect Sony to jump on smaller screens while they wait for the technology to catch up, HDTV is the focus. As for the upcoming standard def-streaming Hancock experiment? The first of many, if things go well, while at the same time he acknowledges format war winner Blu-ray may not penetrate to the same level as DVD since "a lot of people may be happy with an upconverting DVD player" -- which would be music to Toshiba's ears.

The term "widescreen" is one of the most notoriously confusing monikers (this side of Full HD) used to describe a display's specifications. Widescreen generally translates to a 16:10 aspect ratio when discussing computer LCDs (monitors or laptop displays) or 16:9 if you're talking about the living room TV. Of course, it can also refer to the 2.35:1 ratio often used for films or something entirely different if you're Apple touting the wonders of your new widescreen iPhone. Fortunately, we're trending towards at least some convergence around the 16:9 aspect. DisplaySearch predicts that by 2010, 16:9 panels will make up 90% of new laptop displays and 67% of new monitors. Acer has been at the forefront of this transition with products like its Gemstone Blue laptops and the Acer P224W monitor pictured above. The move is being driven by panel manufacturers' desire to maximize production efficiency -- something they should have realized before the glass sizes diverged in the first place. Regardless, the end result should be more pennies saved by you, Joe Consumer, and that's a good thing.

No, no -- this isn't the Eee-branded HDTV. That's another Eee monitor. Seriously ASUS, you deserve some kind of award, nay, banquet to celebrate this crowning achievement. You've single-handedly managed to drive a lust-worthy name six feet below the surface, and now the mere mention of "Eee" just puts us in a foul mood. Nevertheless, we'll attempt to crack something of smile while taking a look at the Eee Monitor, which -- unless that assortment of ports 'round back is completely for show -- isn't just a monitor at all. Rather, this looks to be some sort of all-in-one PC, or a totally fruity docking station at the very least. As with every other ASUS product, there's no pricing or release information coming until who knows when, but you can burn the Eee logo even deeper into your brain by checking out the gallery in the read link below.

It's never clear how a company plans on implementing a given patent, but Sony's patent application for a haptic touchscreen composed of "tactile pixels" lists former Sony Computer Entertainment chief Phil Harrison as the inventor and makes several references to potential use in "a game device" and to "game events," so it's a safe bet that it was at least developed with the PSP in mind. The patent app describes a sophisticated haptic feedback system that goes well beyond the basic rumble of today's device -- the pixels themselves are able to move up and down between two positions, providing direct feedback to user actions. That's certainly an interesting idea, but like all patent news, we're not going to hold out hope for it to surface in a consumer device anytime soon -- but we're willing to be surprised, you know?

[Via PSP Fanboy]

If you're a lazy ass consumer (the very best kind), bent on pulling a device out of the box, plugging it into a wall, and never messing with another bit of "setup" again, you're certainly not alone. In fact, most folks never lift a finger to calibrate their displays, plug better speakers in, or place those speakers in actually advantageous spots. To that end, Mitsubishi is debuting its new LT-46149 and LT-52149 LCDs with integrated 16-speaker sound projectors. Similar to the sound bars offered up by many home audio manufacturers, the "Integrated Sound Projector" (iSP) is designed to bounce sound off walls and around the room to give the illusion of surround sound. The perk of TV integration is an easy to use room configuration on-screen tool to specify your room's dimensions, couch placement and preferred sweet spot size. At the end of the day, your sound is all coming from one spot, so directionality isn't going to quite match a for-realsie surround sound setup, and the system we listened to was a little sharp in the high end, but it's certainly a unique and appealing offering from Mitsu to the everyman TV watcher. The TV itself is CableCard ready, can support sound over HDMI and PCM inputs, and offers Mitsu's 120Hz film dejuddering -- that rather awkwardly makes your favorite films look like they were shot by a TV news crew. The 46-inch and 52-inch LCDs will sell for $3,299 and $3,699, respectively.

There's always that guy (or girl) who dominates meetings, saying the same thing over and over again, or just repeats what others say. We all find it annoying, and we all wish there was some way to make that blabbermouth aware of his (or her) social transgressions. Enter the Reflect table. Reflect monitors conversations and visualizes -- literally -- who has the table using an array of color LEDs. Microphones listen to all the talk and show who is currently talking, who talks the most, and who's being left out. This could be great for business meetings to tone down the "thinking outside the box," but could also be a terrifying ordeal on a first date.

[Via MAKE]

Leave it to space nerds with money to come up with the world's highest resolution visualization system. NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames has created the 128-screen hyperwall-2, a mega display capable of rendering one quarter billion pixels. Hyperwall-2 measures 23- x 10-feet of LCD goodness, and is powered by 128 GPUs and 1,024 processor cores with 74 teraflops of peak processing power. To top things off, 475 terabytes of storage keep the system rolling. All in all, hyperwall-2 has more than 100 times the processing power of its poor predecessor, hyperwall, from 2002. The elder hyperwall was unavailable for comment and is most likely on an alcoholic bender somewhere, complaining about "kids these days."

[Thanks, james]

We already told you about Vizio's new cheap plasmas, but we recently had a chance to witness the 32-inch VP322 in person. The set's case design is very tasteful, and a welcome departure from the flashy, uber-lit displays we've come to expect from Vizio. As for picture quality, the set exhibited the deep blacks one would expect from a plasma display, but the snowy feed of a basketball game -- which we assume was coming form the set's internal ATSC tuner -- wasn't good enough to tell how the VP322 scales and processes to its native 768 lines. The promised three HDMI and component inputs were all there, confirming that this TV is a decent choice for those making the digital transition. For $550 at Wal-Mart, though, we're not about to complain.

It's no surprise that more displays is always better, but when it comes to mimicking the act of reading a book, dual displays is a clear step forward. Researchers at Maryland and Berkeley Universities developed a prototype dual-face, modular e-book reader that allows readers to fan pages to advance in a book or via trackball. If you're doing some serious research, the displays separate from one another, allowing one to display in landscape mode while the other runs in portrait. To complete the book meme, the device can be folded over to run in a more compact manner, and a simple flip changes the page. Possibilities for future e-book readers are endless here, so we applaud Maryland and Berkeley for using those research dollars.

For the few people who knew the brand Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the company is finally, officially going with the Panasonic brand name we all know and love. After much deliberation, shareholders approved a proposal to change the company's name to Panasonic Corporation. The change will begin in Japan October 1, 2008 with an NYSE symbol change from "MC" to "PC" and will be complete in March 2010 with all products and divisions under the Panasonic moniker. While this won't be a big deal to those of us who know Panasonic for its displays and electronics, gone will be the Matsushita battery, ecology, and welding division names. Good bye Matsushita, it was fun while it lasted.