Asus seems to have a lot up its sleeve this festive season. Earlier this month, the company took the covers off its latest O!Play HD2 media player with USB 3.0 support. Catering to gamers as well, Asus now unleashes two new offerings plucked right out of the Republic of Gamers series christened as the G53 and G73 gaming notebooks. Besides housing powerful features, the entrants also boast of Nvidia’s 3D Vision and 3D TV output technology as well as the support for DX11 and 1.5G GDDR5 VRAM.

As the company suggests, the G73Jw is noted to be the world’s premier notebook PC that proffers 3D gaming goodness on a 17” screen in full 1080p high definition. The G53JW-IX157Vexhibits 15.6 inch HD Glare 3D Panel. The duo also includes 3D TV output for connecting any 3D enabled TV through the new HDMI 1.4 standard. They eliminate lag and ghosting as content is delivered in 120 frames per second. The 3D effect is acquired thanksto the inclusion of Fermi graphics, enhanced quality LCD panels, high fidelity active shutter glasses and integrated sensors. Gamers can expect the notebooks to offer Nvidia GTX 460M graphics engine, EAX Advance HD 5.0 software and up to 128 additional sound effects.

The most important factors in any display solution designed especially for digital signage applications are its size and its brightness, ensuring the fact that the images will be clearly visible even in bright sunshine. However, none of the models currently available on the market will be able to compete against Samsung's latest development, a 70-inch panel touted by its manufacturer to be the world's brightest, with a light output of 2000 nits.

According to the company's statement, this digital information display (DID) is one-third brighter than the previous model and has been designed to optimally accommodate the wide range of lighting conditions affecting outdoor displays. Besides providing around 4 times the brightness of most consumer-grade HDTVs, the device also sports a brightness-control option, which actually allows operators to "dim it down" during nighttime.Moreover, by using local dimming LED technology, the DID LCD panel manages to keep power consumption as low as possible by adjusting picture brightness in very precise "localized" increments, thereby avoiding having to brighten areas that don’t require it.

One of the main advantages provided by this local dimming technology is related to the contrast ratio, which achieves a very impressive value, of 200,000:1. Other features worth mentioning are the Full-HD (1080p) screen resolution with 16.7 million colors, plus some very good viewing angles, namely 178 degrees on both horizontal and vertical directions.

The panel weighs 80 kilograms, is 1630mm (millimeters) wide by 952mm high by 129.6mm deep, and can be used in either portrait or landscape format, thus making it pretty versatile. Unfortunately, no pricing details have been provided, but Samsung claims that the first samples of this "super-bright" display will be available by the year's end, with mass production most likely scheduled to start at some point in early 2009.

Asus has announced plans to release new series of Full HD 1080p ready displays to cater the needs of quickly emerging high definition market. October 2008 will see two new models VK266H and VW266H widescreen 25.5 inch (16:10 aspect ratio) LCD monitors followed by 24 inches VK246H and VW246H widescreen HD ready displays, all four model support stereo speakers, HDMI for delivery of multichannel audio and uncompressed digital video through a single cable for Full HD 1080p quality.

Asus VK266H and VW266H HD LCD Features :

* 1920×1200 high resolution
* Full HD 1080p video playback
* HDMI input
* High 20000:1 contrast ratio * 2 ms (gray-to-gray) response time
* Component video input (YPbPr)
* S/PDIF digital audio output
* ASUS exclusive Splendid™ Video Intelligence Technology for image optimization

Asus has plans to complete its HD/Full HD 16:9 LCD displays lineup by the year end.

No details on availability and pricing is known.