Sometimes one monitor just cannot display the amount of information we need to see at any given point in time, hence the need for multi-monitor set ups such as the truly awe-inspiring CineMassive MasterPlex 30D.
Featuring a total of six LCD monitors comprising of a central 2560×1600 resolution LCD screen and five 20.1” perimeter LCD screens with resolutions of 1600×1200 the CineMassive MasterPlex 30D boasts an a total active pixel count of a staggering 7,942,000 pixels. And, in light of the sheer number of pixels that make up this truly massive display the fact that the product’s warranty includes a zero dead pixel guarantee is certainly highly commendable.
Not only that, but a quick glance at the product’s extensive specifications leaves you in no doubt as to the quality of the unit.
The full specifications are as follows:
Central 30″ panel specifications (central LCD)
* Input: Dual-link DVI-D (digital)
* Resolution: 2560×1600 pixels (QXGA+)
* Viewing angle: 178º horizontal / 178º vertical
* Brightness: 400 cd/m²
* Contrast ratio: 1000:1
* Response: 6ms (gray to gray)
* Pixel pitch: 0.250mm
* Aspect ratio: 16:10
* Maximum colors: 16.7 million
* Power consumption: 130W max
* Certification standards: TCO ‘99 / TCO ‘03
* International integrated power supply:
* 90-264 VAC; 50-60 Hz
Secondary (portrait mode) LCD specifications
* Viewable image: 20.1″ diagonal
* Resolution: 1600×1200 pixels (UXGA)
* Viewing angle: 178º horizontal / 178º vertical
* Brightness: 300 cd/m²
* Contrast ratio: 800:1
* Response: 8ms (gray to gray)
* Pixel pitch: 0.255mm
* Maximum colors: 16.7 million
* Mount: VESA 100mm
* International integrated power supply:
* 100-240 VAC; 50-60 Hz
* Energy: EPA ENERGY STAR compliant
* Certification standards: TCO ‘99 / TCO ‘03
Tertiary (top row) LCD specifications
* Viewable image: 20.1″ diagonal
* Resolution: 1600×1200 pixels (UXGA)
* Viewing angle: 178º horizontal / 178º vertical
* Brightness: 300 cd/m²
* Contrast ratio: 800:1
* Response: 8ms (gray to gray)
* Pixel pitch: 0.255mm
* Maximum colors: 16.7 million
* Power consumption: 75W maximum; 55W normal;
* less than 2W (power-saving mode)
* International integrated power supply:
* 100-240 VAC; 50-60 Hz
* Energy: EPA ENERGY STAR compliant
* Certification standards: TCO ‘99 / TCO ‘03
Campatable with Windows Vista, XP and Mac OS the CineMassive MasterPlex 30D is a hardcore display by anyone’s standards, as long as you have a desk big enough to take it.
The unit retails for $7499 and a wealth of further information concerning this monster of a display, as well as the full range of multi-monitor set ups offered by CineMassive - be gained directly from the product’s official website.
Massive MasterPlex 30D LCD Display
A Memoriam Cassette Tape
As far as people of a certain age are concerned – and that very much includes myself – it is sobering to think that there are younger people out there who have never actually either used or ever even owned a cassette tape, but for those of us who experienced this particular, somewhat temperamental storage medium you may well be interested in taking a trip down memory lane whist spotting all the cassettes you may have owned.
Sony UXPro90 Cassette Tape
Sony UX-Pro 90
- Quality recording and Sonic Stage free -
TapeDeck.Org offers beautifully laid out imagery of cassette tapes from the like of BASF, TDK, Sony and Maxell to name but a few and it certainly brings the memories flooding back. Who can possibly forget the hours spent trying to unravel caught tapes from the pinch rollers of the cassette decks before winding it all back in with a pencil or, in worse case scenarios, taking out the tiny screws from the plastic shell in a desperate attempt to find just where in the reel the tape has become folded.
If like me, you spent hours of your youth sitting patiently with your finger on the pause button trying to second guess when the DJ would start talking in order to edit him/her out this magnificent online cassette museum brings it all back home and it’s quite alarming just how many of the cassettes shown stir our recollections.
Out of interest, if you happen to have carrier bags full of cassette tape stored up in the roof in in the deepest recesses of a cupboard, and you yearn to re-master your ‘megamixes’ you may find the previously featured standalone cassette to MP3 converter, the Plus Deck EX, of interest.
BOSS BR900CD 8-Track Digital Recorder
The BOSS BR900CD is the musician’s portable dream studio. Its road tough, fun to use, and it performs far beyond its weight class. This reliable all-in-one digital recorder stands out with its professional effects, realistic drum-pattern generator, vocal-correction and Mastering Tool Kit, digital output, and internal CD burner. No matter where you are — in your home studio or on the road — all you’ll need is a BR-900CD, and you can write, record, edit, mix, master, and burn a complete polished CD anywhere, anytime.
* Built-in CD-burner and Mastering Tool Kit
* 8 simultaneous playback tracks, 2 simultaneous recording tracks with 8 V-tracks (64 V-Tracks total)
* 2 XLR inputs with phantom power, plus 1/4" and RCA inputs, and digital out
* Pitch correction, chorus, delay, reverb, EQ, and other great BOSS-quality effects
* Programmable drum generator with 294 patterns, plus Tone Load function for custom beats
* Record direct to Compact Flash (128MB card included; record up to 624 minutes with optional 1GB card)
* Record direct to CD-R/RW
* USB port for data backup to computer, plus importing/exporting WAV files
* Runs on batteries or AC power
* Accessories Included: AC adapter, owners manual, demo card
Sourond Sound with Flat Mini Bar
Thinking of owning a surround sound home theater system but don’t want all those many speaker boxes lying here and there in your home then this Polk Audio’s SurroundBar50 is definitely been designed for you . The SoundBar features patented SDA(Stereo Dimensional Array) technology to simulate real surround sound like experience from single speaker.
The surroundBar is 51 inches wide and has metallic black finish which will match your Television sets smoothly and will give enriching music experience to your ears.
One other sound technology that we have discussed before is Personal Audio space which makes it possible to enjoy you favorite music while another person sleeping in the other corner of the same room would not be able to hear thus no disturbance for others while you enjoy your movies.
Aqua Photo Wall Mounted Widescreen Aquarium
Chances are that you have at least a few pictures hanging from your walls but that they are fairy lifeless and have become so imprinted on your brain that you barely give them a second glance. That’s certainly not something that could be said for this Aqua Photo wall mounted widescreen aquarium.
With more than a passing resemblance to a widescreen television, this Aqua Photo aquarium measures in at an impressive 1460 x 640 cm (even it size strikes us as being more of a screen resolution rather than a measurement) and weighs in at 4kg.
The 100 watt backlit Aqua Photo comes with all the necessary paraphernalia required (sans H2O and finned residents) ready for you to mount so all you need is a few high def tropical fish and you’re away. Just don’t be surprised to find your guests pointing the remote at it in a futile attempt to change the channel.
The Aqua Photo Wall Mounted Widescreen Aquarium retails for 2,000,000 South Korean Won - which is approximately $2132 / £1060 / €1569 at the time of writing (excluding shipping) - though if your budget cannot quite stretch to this, perhaps this ComFish Mini USB Desktop Aquarium may be of interest.
Bang & Olufsen Beo5 Remote Controls Products Yet Invented
Looking like some curious control panel retrieved from a crashed alien spaceship the Beo 5 is certainly one of the most distinctive remote controllers we’ve ever come across and it unequivocally oozes Bang & Olufsen’s daring, inspiring and frankly jaw dropping design style from top to bottom.
“Capable of controlling both your audio/visual equipment as well as delivering further extendibility in the way of home automation via Bang & Olufsen’s Link System, the Beo 5 consists of a hardened glass touch screen enhanced with ‘soft touch’ technology which will display station logos to assist with channel hopping whilst ensuring that the menu remains uncluttered by intelligently adapting to show information pertinent only to the devices you own that it can control.”
Bang and Olufsen Beo5 Remote Control Detail
Ease of use is further enhanced via the use of zones allowing the device to adapt to the equipment in each room automatically. And, if you’re concerned about setting up the Beo 5 to handle future Bang & Olufsen products this quote from the website should put you at ease.
To service the individual needs of each customer, we draw on our unique dealer network to customise each Beo 5 in a way that no central manufacturer could. And when you expand your Bang & Olufsen collection, your dealer will come to your home not only to install the devices physically, but also to upgrade your Beo 5 to handle the newcomers. Even products that have not been invented yet will be possible to control with your Beo 5.
The Beo 5 can also be programmed with macros so, for instance, you can have the Beo 5 automatically dim the lights when playing a CD or, somewhat more impressively, when switching on your DVD you could have the Beo 5 automatically dim the lights, draw the curtains (the Bio 5 is geared towards home automation), switch on your surround sound unit and so on with the mere touch of the screen.
No details have been release at the time of writing with respect to pricing but it’s safe to assume that, being a Bang & Olufsen product, the Beo 5 will prove to be reassuringly expensive and completely out of reach for the majority of us.
Source
Loit Eagle Neo-Retro CD Player Oozes Style
Frankly we were in two minds as to whether to post about this particular gadget as, apart from imagery, we can deliver little in the way of either technical specifications or pricing on account of the fact that Art Lebedev have given us nothing to run with apart from imagery. But when a gadget looks as breathtakingly gorgeous as this Loit Eagle Neo-Retro CD Player how could we not offer a heads up here on TFTS?
Accordingly, we have little choice but to let the imagery speak for itself.
Rest assured, the moment we have further information concerning Loit Eagle Neo-Retro CD Player we’ll be offering an update in this post, however, in the meantime if this neo-retro style rocks your boat and you happen to be in the market for an iPod amplifier then then we recommend you take a look at the uber cool Shanling MC-30 Tube Amplifier iPod Music Center (which would compliment this device beautifully).
New Audio Stuff : Plus Deck EX
We’ve previously featured the Plus Deck Cassette Recorder that plug into a free drive bay in your computer but if the very idea of having a cassette deck mounted in your PC fills you with dread but you happen to have cassettes full of treasured memories that you would love to convert to MP3 this new device from Plus Deck could be exactly what you’re looking for.
This external model comes with a number of upgrades over the previously featured product in the form of RCA I/O, 7.1 support, an integral USB port an inbuilt LCD screen as well as an AM/FM radio tuner. It also comes complete with a remote.
As well as plugging into your PC to assist in converting cassette recordings to digital MP3 format, the Plus Deck EX will also record MP3 playlists to cassettes which strikes us as being curiously brilliant in a hopelessly redundant way.
Personally I have box loads of recordings from the Tresor in Berlin (obtained back in the day when I had hair and a hopelessly naive viewpoint on life) that desperately need converting to MP3 and I don’t doubt that this beautifully retro styled gadget from Plus Deck would fulfil the job admirably.
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Gadget-mania Responsible for Rise in Emissions
Do you love playing your CD player, DAB radio and flat-screen television? Well in that case if you are an environmental champion there might be cause for concern! These precious entertainment gadgets, a necessity of almost every household today, drain a whole lot of energy. Energy that is harnessed at the expense of global warming.
As per a report from the he Energy Saving Trust (EST), The Ampere Strikes Back, the consumer electronics sector is now only three years away from becoming the biggest single user of domestic electricity in Britain.
In 2010, it will overtake lighting, and “white goods” such as fridges and freezers, in home energy use. By 2020, entertainment and computer technology in the home will account for an extraordinary 45 per cent of all electricity used in UK households.
Now consider this: it will be equivalent to the output from 14 power stations along with costing the owners of the gadgetry 5bn a year. So where will global warming stand then? The growth of single person households many with big TVs, set-top boxes, computers, games consoles, TV and music recorders and digital radios will add to the higher energy consumption.
So what can you do? For starters, switch off your gadgets when not in use. Moreover, I mean take out the plug because leaving it in readiness to be switched on also wastes energy. I cannot ask you to stop using flat-screen TVs and digital radios, which are the most energy intensive gadgets, but I can definitely hope that technological advances in the future will turn them into more energy efficient devices.
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JBL Cinema Vision Home Theater
Home theater surround sound is getting a lot more affordable than you may think. It’s also surprisingly simple to implement when you hook up a system that’s built for ease of use, like this JBL Cinema Vision set. The 6.1 channel system is based on a central speaker that features a 1/2″ titanium-laminate dome tweeter alongside two 3″ woofers designed to offer clarity at any volume. A subwoofer sits alongside the center speaker, featuring a built-in 150-watt amp and 10” woofer cone to project the system’s bass. Five additional satellite speakers each feature 1/2″ titanium-laminate dome tweeters and dual 3″ midrange cones, providing a rich surround sound that is customizable to fit your space.
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Sony DVP-FX850 Portable DVD Player
Sony has officially launched a couple of products, one of them is the Portable DVD Played codenamed DVP-FX850. The most important specification is the monitor, in this case it is an 8-inch TFT (wide screen) that can swivel 180 degrees to pleasure everyone. The second most crucial detail is the battery life which for this baby is a good amount - 6 hours.
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50Gb Blu-ray - Great Disk Storage in Future ?
Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.
While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it’s possible to fit more data on the disc even though it’s the same size as a
CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB.
Blu-ray is currently supported by more than 170 of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer,
recording media, video game and music companies. The format also has broad support from the major movie studios as a successor to today’s DVD format. Seven of the eight major movie studios have already announced titles for Blu-ray, including Warner, Paramount, Fox, Disney, Sony, MGM and Lionsgate. The initial line-up is expected to consist of over 100 titles and include recent hits as well as classics such as Batman Begins, Desperado, Fantastic Four, Fifth Element, Hero, Ice Age, Kill Bill, Lethal Weapon, Mission Impossible, Ocean’s Twelve, Pirates of the Caribbean, Reservoir Dogs, Robocop, and The Matrix. Many studios have also announced that they will begin releasing new feature films on Blu-ray Disc day-and-date with DVD, as well as a continuous slate of catalog titles every month.
Akai Music Production Center 500
The MPC500 is the first truly portable all–in–one Music Production Center, affording artists the ability to sample and create music on–the–go. Whether you travel around the globe for hit–making sessions or across town to link up for a casual beatmaking hang, the MPC500 is the ultimate answer to your mobile production needs. Fully compatible with the legendary MPC line, you can work anywhere with the MPC500’s battery–powered capability and drop them back into your MPC2500 when you get back to the studio.
The MPC500 combines a 48–Track MIDI Sequencer and a 32–voice Stereo Digital Sampler, with 12 velocity and pressure sensitive rubber pads. 16MB of on–board memory comes standard and can be expanded up to 128 MB of RAM. When connected to a Mac or PC via its built–in USB port, you can simply drag & drop data between the computer and the MPC500’s CF card. Compatible with other MPC products, the MPC500 extends users’ studios to fit in with their mobile lifestyles.
Features:
* Battery powered (6 AA’s) or AC powered (with included power adaptor)
* Pattern–based 48–track sequencer with 16 MIDI channels
* 32–voice drum/phrase sampler with up to 128MB RAM
* Velocity and pressure sensitive pads for responsive, accurate programming
* 12 Levels function: one sound on all pads with varied level or tuning per pad
* Built–in Compact Flash drive and USB port (Mass Storage Class)
* Support for standard WAV files and MIDI sequences
* Built–in Analog I/O, headphone output, and MIDI In/Out
* Internal sounds in Flash
* 4–way sample layering and velocity switching per pad
* 1 low pass filter with resonance per voice
* On–board effects: 2 stereo effects and a Master effect
References: http://www.akaipro.com
Korg announce mixers with KAOSS Pad features
Korg unveils the new two-channel KM-202 and four-channel KM-402 Dynamic DJ Mixers — unique hybrid products that combine the effects and interface from the renowned KAOSS Pad with a rugged, performance-oriented 24-bit digital DJ mixer complete with a variety of independent EQ types and adjustable crossfader curves.
km-202The KM-202 and KM-402 incorporate one hundred popular effects from the mini-KP KAOSS Pad. The user simply moves their finger along the built-in X/Y pad to easily control a multitude of effects parameters for advanced and powerful effects changes. Effects range from filters, phasers, delays and reverbs, to unique effects such as a real-time looper and synth section. A Tap Tempo button makes it easy to keep the many BPM effects in time with the current source material. A Program Memory key enables users to quickly save and recall effect programs. An FX Release function keeps delay and reverb tails intact when releasing the pad, and a KAOSS button allows users to assign the KAOSS Pad to each channel.
The new mixers employ full-digital processing to provide six unique EQ types to suit any sound. Created with input from leading artists, the EQ presets include curves that cut only the low-frequency region while boosting the mid-range, as well as extreme EQ types that use the knobs as isolators for each frequency band. Each channel has a dedicated three-band EQ that responds according to the EQ curve selected via a top panel six-position knob.
Each mixer offers line and phono inputs. Also included is a Mic input, which can be routed through the KAOSS Pad for effects treatment or vocoding, or be used as a stand-alone talkback source. Both units also provide Master and Booth outputs, a Headphone/Booth monitoring switch (for cueing material) and six-step LEDs for output signal monitoring. A jack guard provides protection to the I/O section for enhanced durability.
Additionally, the adjustable crossfader curves and calibration function allows users to tailor the mixer to suit their ideal feel and control, from traditional signal mixing to the most athletic scratch-based performance.
References: http://www.korg.com/
Balance 012 : EQ Recordings released
EQ Recordings continue onwards and upwards with their cult-like Balance Series in an ever evolving manner bringing you the next instalment mixed by the wandering minstrel of dance music; Lee Burridge. Revered the world over for his eclectic track selection and seamless skills, it’s a genuinely difficult task to pinpoint Lee’s ’sound’ - although according to the man himself its perhaps best described as “wonky, wobbly, bassline-driven, trippy, melodic, nasty, gentle, deep, spacious, rocking and above all … 100% cool!!” Offering a premium selection of underground House, Lee’s DJ sets are never the same twice … they have to be heard to be believed … so, what better way to showcase this sublimely varied mixture of vibes than on a triple disc mix for one of the world’s leading compilation series, ‘Balance‘?!
Pioneer announced the “DJM-700″
Delivering breathtaking scope for creativity, consummate clarity and a world first in terms of its Effect Frequency Filter, the new DJM-700 is dramatically different. The 4-channel mixer inherits the sound quality of the DJM-800 and DJM-1000, it also includes some key features including MIDI connectivity, 49 assignables, cutting edge digital effects and a filter on pre-out so you can filter the effects.