Panasonic has unveiled the world's first portable Blu-ray disc player, DMP-B15, which is designed to provide High Definition Blu-ray experience on the go.

It features a 8.9-inch WSVGA LCD screen, BD Live functionality and unique VIERA CAST Internet accessibility. The VIERA CAST allows users to select entertainment sites including Amazon Video-on-Demand, a streaming video service that provides access to more than 40,000 titles; YouTube; Google Picasa Web Album; Bloomberg and weather channel.

The DMP-B15 is designed with great ease of use and is equipped with a 3-hour rechargeable battery that would last. You can also treat it like a standalone Blu-ray player and connect it directly to your HDTV witha HDMI cable. And like all Panasonic Blu-ray players, the DMP-B15 features an SD memory card slot for users to view and share digital photos and HD videos.

Panasonic has introduced two new Blu-ray players – the DMP-BD35 and DMP-BD55.

The players claim to feature technology that reproduces movies with colors 'faithful' to the original. The PHL Reference Chroma Processor Plus video processor, (included in the player's circuitry) was developed after more than 15 years of collaboration between Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory and professional cinema studios in Hollywood.Both models feature an HD Audio Decoder (Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus and DTSTM-HD Master Audio Essential), which support the 7.1-channel surround sound newly adopted in Blu-ray Discs.

The Panasonic BD55 has a 192kHz, 24bit, audio digital-analog converter plus high quality components, as quoted in their release. The DMP-BD55 can also output analog signals for 7.1-channel sound.

Another cool USP is the slim design, which is due to something called the UniPhier chip. UniPhier is a Panasonic-created system LSI developed by applying 45-nanometer processing to a consumer product – a world’s first. This single-chip integration technology also contributes greatly to the BD35’s slim height of 49mm.

Both the BD35 and BD55 feature BD-Live compatibility which enables users to connect to the Internet to download images, subtitles and other data, and take part in interactive activities and multi-player games linked to bonus cinema content found on Blu-ray Discs.

There's no information on the pricing yet.

As some of you probably know, for quite a long time, the IFA show in Berlin has been all about the latest developments in the TV industry, but, over the years, it has expanded quite a lot, now housing just about every type of consumer electronic product one might think of. Nevertheless, the most important names in the industry use this event in order to promote their latest and most attractive TV sets, and that's also the case with Sharp, which has just unveiled the Aquos XS1 super-thin HDTV LCD, as well as several other interesting A/V products.



The first thing that draws anyone's attention to the XS1 is, without a doubt, the very thin profile, namely 23 mm at the thinnest side, but, unfortunately, 46 mm at the thickest (otherwise, it might have snatched away the title of world's thinnest LCD TV from Sony). Moreover, the TV set also boasts an absolutely extraordinary dynamic contrast ratio (1,000,000:1), which is also comparable to that of the most advanced models announced today by Sony.The XS1 is available in two different variants, one measuring 52 inches in diagonal, while the other is significantly larger, at 65 inches. Both versions deliver full HD, 1920 x 1080 pixel resolutions, as well as 100Hz motion processing and a detachable speaker system, developed together with Pioneer.



Beside this ultra-thin HDTV, the company has also announced several other products, including a few "normal" and some eco-friendly LCD units, as well as a Blu-ray player, the BD-HP21H, which supports Bonus View Profile 1.1 and also sports a quick-start mode.



Unfortunately, none of the products mentioned above has received a price tag, but we sure hope that we'll see them in stores as soon as possible, perhaps even before the year's end.Source : softpedia.com