Sharp unveils 108-inch LCD television

LAS VEGAS--Sharp Electronics took the wraps off a 108-inch LCD television, what it called the world's largest, during a press conference Sunday on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show.

The market for these behemoth televisions is small, but Sharp executives noted that prices over time decline and that other large televisions have found customers despite early skepticism. The 108-inch television comes out this summer for an as-yet unspecified price.

"A lot of people had questions when we introduced a 65-inch TV," said Bob Scaglione, senior vice president of Sharp Electronics America. Commercial customers buy these sort of televisions, he noted.

More importantly, the television is a shot across the bow to the plasma industry and Sharp's other competitors in LCD. The 108-inch LCD is now larger than the biggest plasmas that have yet been announced, noted Toshihiko Fujimoto, CEO of Sharp Electronics worldwide. The television also has a higher resolution than plasmas and lower power consumption, he said. The technologies found in these big televisions eventually trickles down to smaller, higher-volume sets. (The largest plasmas measure around 105 inches.)

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Microsoft's digital hub for the home uncovered

With Windows Home Server, Microsoft aims to bring order to consumers' messy digital lives--and to define a new product category.

Company Chairman Bill Gates launched the personal server push during his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show on Sunday, saying that partner Hewlett-Packard plans to offer an HP MediaSmart Server based on the design this fall.

The Windows Home Server is for households that want to share storage among multiple PCs or Xboxes game consoles. It will provide automatic backup, easier storage expansion and connectivity among different devices, including Zune media players, Gates said.

"If you have got multiple PCs, then you want files that are available all the time, no matter which PCs are turned on or off. And you'd also like to have a server that, when you just add storage, it automatically takes advantage of that," Gates noted in an interview with CNET News.com.

Since the launch, more concrete details of Windows Home Server have dribbled out.
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Nokia unveils new, thinner multimedia phones

The world's largest cell phone maker, Nokia, unveiled slim new multimedia handsets at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in an answer to stiff competition from rivals such as Motorola.

The Finnish company, which makes one in three phones sold globally, has suffered from a lack of thin models in the last two years as consumers sought slimmer phones following the success of Motorola's Razr. The N76's debut at CES is intended to highlight not only the phone's stylishness but its multimedia capabilities.

At 13.7 millimeters thick, the new Nokia N76 phone is as slender as most slim-line models from smaller rivals. The Razr is 14mm thick and lags far behind in terms of features.

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TI chip turns mobiles into movie projectors

LAS VEGAS--Texas Instruments wants to turn your cell phone into a wide-screen TV.

The semiconductor manufacturer is showing a prototype digital projector, based on its digital light processors (DLPs), that could fit on a cell phone. The projector contains three lasers, a DLP chip, and a power supply and measures about 1.5 inches in length. With the projector, the cell phone can beam DVD-quality video onto a screen, thereby allowing it (in conjunction with the screen or a white wall) to serve as a video player or a TV.

"We have it in our labs in Dallas. Now we have to figure out how to commercialize it," said John Van Scoter, senior vice president of DLP products at TI, in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show here.

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