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LG's 'Specialist' phones each bring one high-end feature
We still haven't seen all of LG's next premium phone, the G5, but tonight it's unveiling two interesting midrange handsets. Dubbed the Specialist X Series, the X cam and X screen are both fairly basic phones with Android Marshmallow 6.0, quad-core CPUs, 2GB of RAM and a smallish 16GB of storage for what we assume will be a reasonable price. As you can probably guess, each one then brings a extra...special feature.
Planar dives head first into high-end home theater market by acquiring Runco
Joining the growing array of recent acquisitions is Planar and Runco International, as just today Planar has written a check for $36.7 million to take on the assets of privately-held Runco International, Inc. Planar, while not a household name in the home theater biz, managed to hold its own amongst competitors in the HT market, and while the majority of its products catered to the mid-range consumer, we suspect that picking up Runco was the easiest way to launch into the high-end realm. As expected, it looks like the Planar, Runco, and Vidikron brand names will remain as they are, and just as Planar will continue to sell through its current network of distributors, it sure sounds like Runco will remain a niche offering rather than bleeding over towards the mainstream.
Planar Xscreen enables front projection in lit rooms
While it's tough to deny the wow-factor involved in watching a flick or gaming it up on a wall-sized screen, the one dig that front projection has been forced to deal with is the necessity of darkness for optimal viewing pleasure. Planar has reportedly developed a specially designed screen that works with any front projector to provide a "colorful, sharp image" even with all the lights on. This widescreen display, dubbed the Xscreen, pulls off the seemingly impossible by sporting a 4mm layer of hardened glass beneath the actual screen, which apparently provides the "perfectly flat" surface needed to reflect those random rays of light that currently cause all that viewing frustration in lit environments. If that wasn't enough, Planar's design team stepped it up a notch by crafting a "black high-gloss finish frame sure to enhance any décor," which is presumably an attempt to overcome the Xscreen's inability to roll up and out of the way like other screens without a glass backpanel. While the Xscreen is nothing more than a display, the Xscreen Plus offers a smorgasbord of standard video and audio inputs / outputs (DVI, VGA, component, S-video, RCA, etc.) to make routing those lengthy cable runs a bit more manageable; the upgraded version also rocks "Pixelworks video processing," onboard speakers, a universal remote, and Europeans even get the luxury of dual TV tuners (got beef with America, Planar?). While both flavors are available in 60-, 70-, 80-, and 100-inch sizes, there's no telling how much this gigantic blank picture frame / front projection display will run you -- but until we get some face time with this enlightening panel to determine marvel or gimmick, you're probably better off left in the dark.[Via Gizmag]
