Nearly a year after the announcement of JVC's DLA-HD1 1080p projector come this, their DLA-HD100. The latest projector to sport a trio of 0.7-inch D-ILA devices doubles the reported contrast ratio to 30,000:1 while scaling back the lumens from 700 to 600 of the same 200W bulb. Inputs include 2x HDMI v1.3 supporting your choice of 1080/24p/50p/60p sources; component, S-Video and the ubiquitous composite connectors. A 2x zoom lens offers a 100-inch projection from a distance of 10- to 20-feet. This 24dB projector is expected in Japan mid November for ¥840,000 or about $7,312 -- right, about twice the price of the latest generation 1080p 3LCD projectors offering less than half the contrast. Decision, decisions.

[Via Impress]

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:


JACK FM has been like those massive spaceships from the movie Independence Day, coming from a foreign land (Canada) to hover over American cities before deploying their beam of massive personality destruction. When it landed on WCBS -FM in New York two years ago, fans of the station's previous oldies format were aghast as their favorite station was unceremoniously tossed off the air. Today, though, while its once signature deejay, radio hall of fame inductee Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, has moved on to more Sirius pursuits, the old songs and familiar jingle of ye ole WCBS-FM can be heard better than ever at 101.1 FM on the New York radio dial -- if you have an HD Radio receiver, that is.

Approved by the FCC in October 2002 as the digital heir to terrestrial analog radio, HD Radio has seen slow growth up to this point. In contrast to XM and Sirius, which competed with each other to gain subscribers and subsidized receivers in a model torn from the playbook of cellular carriers, HD Radio has no terrestrial competition and it's free. As with satellite radio, much of HD Radio receiver growth will ultimately come by way of car manufacturers including it in vehicles. Yet today, even though 1,300 stations now broadcast in HD Radio, most HD Radio-capable products up to this point have been high-end aftermarket car stereos or tony table radios available from the likes of Boston Acoustics for hundreds of dollars.

However, with a big advertising push coming this spring, more affordable receivers are starting to appear. Sony has signed on to incorporate HD Radio in its products over the next few years. The Accurian Tabletop HD Radio, appropriately available at Radio Shack, sells for $159 before rebate. And now Silicon Prarie startup Radiosophy is offering the boombox-like HD100 receiver for merely $59 after rebate. This makes it the least expensive HD Radio on the market.

The GlobalTop HD100 GPS heads-up display is pulling a formal review over at DigitalReviews. This is the same Bluetooth GPS receiver with speed alerts that we went hands-on with in March. This highly portable navigation stick packs a MediaTek chip capable of a 1 second hot start acquisition time or 36 seconds cold. Although they have yet to take the device on the open road, they've already found the bright and constantly blinking LEDs (even after GPS and Bluetooth device acquisition) to be rather annoying and likely distracting during nighttime use. The device also requires that you stick a reflective film to your windshield before getting your HUD on. Fortunately, the two included film strips are much smaller than the early prototype we saw at CeBIT. The worst news? We'll have to wait a few more weeks before they get around to testing the device on the open road. Worth the wait to see just how well the device hooks into the navigation software on Bluetooth-equipped phones and PDAs.

[Thanks, Anton]

HP's hd100 HD DVD external USB drive is finally shipping and listed on sale at several retailers. Announced last fall, it was scheduled to ship in 2006 but didn't quite make it. We checked with HP when taking a look at a few other proucts (like it's evil twin, the bd135 Blu-ray burner also pictured above) and found out it is now shipping, a quick search on Froogle shows it can be bought for $449. What does $240 more than the price of an Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on that also works on the PC buy you? A drive capable of 2.4x HD DVD / 5x DVD / 14x CD read speeds, USB 2.0 cable, power cord, assorted manuals and support software and a copy of Cyberlink's PowerDVD HD DVD edition. Unfortunately, at a price that buys two Microsoft-subsidized Xbox 360 drives and leaves $40 left over to put towards playback software and an HD upgrade we're not in that much of a hurry to add-to-cart, but for an officially supported HD DVD solution on the PC, this is about it.