Hey folks, Valkor here. Just last week Alacran and I were able to attend Samsung’s Holiday in July event over in NYC, which is always a fun place to attend any event, plus it’s Samsung, who always throw a schwinging shindig. But this wasn’t so much a party, more like a convergence of the press on this place to check out some of Samsung’s newest gizmos that might be under your tree this year. There were a ton of stuff on display but we can’t go over all of it can we? So let’s check out some of my favs shall we?
In the camcorder department the MX10 and the HMX10 stand out. The MX10 is what they called the “YouTube” cam because you can record it and quickly upload it right to the website or any similar website. Personally TOV needs one of these for CES 2008 (which we will be attending). It has great zoom, plus has control features on the monitor as well as on the cam, can hold at max 32gig SDcard, and you get 2 hours of recording on any charge. Now the HMX10 is the Hi-Def version of the MX10 with more features added. Not only can you record and playback in HD (720p to be exact), but it has built in 8 gigs of space and a touch screen. TOV will be looking more into these cams hopefully before years end.
Moving right along, we’re gonna jump right into the Blu-ray pool as well as comment on the whole HD war thing. On hand Samsung showed off two new 3rd generation players, the BD-P1400 and 2400. Both players are essentially the same but the 2400 offers up the HQV (High Quality Video) Processor. With this added chip, and direct from the press release “enables true 1080i to 1080p HD de-interlacing for the best HD images possible — even from DVD formats.” This means all your videos will look there finest on your HD TV. The demo looked pretty sweet especially this one vid of this guy putting together a watch. The details you can see is astounding. It’s video that looks so good you swear you could reach in and smack that guy in the head. Now I gotta add my two cents (again) to the whole Hi-def DVD debacle. It’s great that the dust is clearing and by years end we will have a clear winner. But this isn’t me riding the bandwagon here, but it looks like Blu-ray will be the definitive winner in all this. I’m not saying the HD-DVD camp can’t pull it out in the end, but with almost every major studio on the Blu-Ray bandwagon, all but Universal, and from what I’ve been reading they are not to far off from signing off on the new format. As 2007 draws to a close, we shall see who will be the new victor, but I won’t be surprised if it’s Blu-ray.
We got a little sidetrack, but we continue with MP3 players or rather an MP3 docking station, the MM-X5. It wasn’t in action, which I would have loved to have taken for a spin. Not only can you attach your IPOD (any version) to the dock, but it has a USB port where you can attach any USB mp3 player to it. It offers CD playback, FM tuner and an alarm clock with sound that is equivalent to Bose. Again this is arguable as we need to get one of these bad boys in the Val-cave for testing.
Speaking of sounds, we have MP3 players to talk about. Along with the K5 successor the K3 (review coming soon, promise) we have the U3 which is a simple drag, drop and go player for those who wanna avoid all the hassle of working with windows media player (which personally I don’t mind). And of course there is the K3 which now comes in colors of black, green, and red.
Finally there is Samsung’s 3D demo, which is very beneficial for gaming. Used in conjunction with their DLP TV’s, the 3D viewer allows you to view movies and games in 3D with out the red/green glasses that really frig with your eyes after you take them off. The 3D was sharp and looked damn good. During the Sims demo, the bottom menu interface stood out from the in game action, which really gives you a more immersive feel. World of Warcraft done in 3D???? Oh yea I can’t wait to try this out!! If I have to drag my PC to CES 2008 and plug it into this display just to try this out, so shall it be done my friends.
Overall not a bad outing by Samsung. But leave us not forget they were showing off some great TV’s especially the awesome 71” Plasma. We don’t really do TV’s at TOV but we do love lookin at em. We will keep you guys up to date on these and other Samsung products as we get em in. Until then I hope this preview of things to come hold you over until the main event. From myself and my team at TOV we wanna thank the folks at Samsung for inviting us to this event as well as others. Also I wanna give thanks to the folks at MWW Group for doing a fine job of walking us through the wide array of products on hand.