by Jay Garrett on March 17, 2010
The Office for National Statistics has refreshed its hypothetical shopping basket again.
Alongside the addition of liquid soap, cereal bars and garlic bread (it’s the future!) comes the arrival of the more gadgety Blu-ray player!
If you’re not sure what all this is about the ONS updates this rather huge ‘basket’ to reflect the average urban consumer’s spending habits.
This is then used to calculate the consumer prices index (CPI), which the Bank of England is furiously trying to keep below 3 per cent according to The Guardian.
Now that Blu-ray players are pretty affordable, with even top notch gear falling in the sub-£200 zone the HD tech now sits in the country’s basket in order to “capture price changes in this new expanding technology”.
Also joining the gadgety invasion are video game accessories thanks to the extra cash being spent by gamers on the likes of Wii Fit, Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Singstar.
The ONS calls this a “relatively new market” – just wait til Xbox 360’s Project Natal and the PlayStation 3’s Move busts out!
Gone are disposable cameras thanks to “decreasing expenditure as digital compact cameras and mobile phone photography become increasingly popular”.
Do you think that this represents the average shopper?
by Jay Garrett on March 10, 2010
I was 31 floors up in Centre Point on Tuesday to witness Sharp’s new line of televisions which, for the first time in tele history, is rocking a fourth, yellow, sub pixel joining its red, green, and blue buddies.
Sharp is waiting before joining the possible ‘fad’ of 3D and is instead looking to make large screen TV’s more economical (40% less power used compared with other LCD’s), brighter, ’sharp’er and with a larger pallet.
“The revolutionary new four colour technology enables billions of colours to be displayed, providing brighter video gaming, clearer sports viewing and sharper action enjoyment”, says the company.
Sharp actually played around with introducing white and cyan pixels but the yellow pixels had the best match of transparency and usefulness as yellow helps with greens, yellows (duh!) as well as the lighter blues.
As Neuroscientist, Dr Jack Lewis, says: “a key mechanism of perceiving colour involves comparing levels of red versus green light and blue versus yellow light, which all happens in a special layer of neurons within the retina. The addition of the yellow sub-pixel (to the standard red, green and blue) in this product creates so many new colour tones that the new technology Sharp is using to create images is mimicking critical features of the brain’s visual system. This could ultimately make us feel more involved in things we watch on TV, whether it’s playing a video game with your mates, cheering on your team or watching the latest action thriller”.
Be prepared to see the little yellow pixies …. errr.. pixels in new Sony goggle-boxes too as apparently they’ve invested heavily with Sharp for the research that’s delivered this extra shade.
Sharp’s new range; the LC-LE811E, LC-LE821E, LC-LE921E, and LC-LE920 will come in 40, 46 and 60 inch flavours with a range of new tech to boost the appeal even further.
Each model is 1080p HD ready, will come complete with Sharp’s UltraBrilliant Edge-lit panel technology and will have HD Freeview baked in as standard.
You also get timeshift so you don’t miss ‘enders as you make a cuppa or if you wanna skip the adverts in 24. This uses the 8GB internal flash memory which is good for about 25 minutes of HD or a coupla hours in standard viewing.
You’ll be able to shove a USB device into the back of the tele but this will only bring the joys of vibrant pictures and sounds until the firmware update which will allow DivX flicks. This should hit the sets in August.
Pricing will start around £1400 for the 40″ which should be out at the end of April.