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Epson Develops a Rival to Microsoft Surface

Andy Salisbury — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:38:49 -0500

It looks like Microsoft’s Surface won’t be the only computer in the interactive touch-sensitive table market; Epson has recently announced their very own offering, the xDesk.

Aside from having an extremely cheesy name, the xDesk offers some pretty solid features for a machine of this caliber including a 52-inch, 1024x768 touch screen that can communicate with gadgets such as phones and cameras placed onto its surface, and the ability to recognize gesture recognition, allowing multiple users to drag around photos or draw. It’ll also transfer audio and video wirelessly though Bluetooth 2.1, but if you’d rather go the wired route and use FireWire or one of the five USB 2.0 ports, that works fine too.

Underneath the hood you’ll find a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 250GB HDD and an ATI HD 4850 GPU. Though, as for pricing and availability, there’s still no word.

Also, if you’d like to see a video if it in action, be sure to click here.

Image Credit: Epson

Epson Excites HTPC Fans with Endeavor ST120 (But There's a Catch...)

Mark Edward Soper — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:27:18 -0600

If you're tired of tiny form-factor HTPCs run by underwhelming processors, the newest version of the Epson Endeavor ST HTPC is a shot of adrenaline. As Nexus404 reports, the new ST120, which measures only 75x185x195 mm (or approximately 2.95x7.28x7.68 inches), features powerful processing and movie playback power:

Core 2 Duo processor running at speeds from 2.26-2.8GHz
GM45 Express chipset
HDTV Tuner
1GB DDR2 RAM with upgrade options to 4GB
80GB to 250GB SATA hard disk
Blu-Ray or DVD drive

If you're looking for an ultra-compact HTPC with most of the guts of a desktop, what's the catch? There are two, really:

Catch #1: It costs approximately $1,573
Catch #2: The price is converted from Japanese yen, because Japan's the only place that will see the ST120 rolled out for sale.

Want to see Epson roll out an Americanized version? Think Epson should stick to printers, scanners, and all-in-one units? Have a suggestion for a similarly small and powerful HTPC that's available outside of Japan? You know what to do: hit Comment and tell us all about it.

Image courtesy Engadget.com.

Accolade Duet Projection Screen

Michael Brown — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:42:54 -0500

Your current video projector has a 4:3 aspect ratio, but you’re planning to move up to a high-def model with a 16:9 aspect ratio next year. In the meantime, you need to replace your projection screen, which your two-year-old recently mistook for an artist’s canvas. Quite the pickle, eh?

Epson has an easy solution for your dilemma: Its unique Accolade Duet projection screen can deliver either aspect ratio from the same package. Instead of unrolling up or down from a horizontal position, the Duet is vertically oriented and opens to the left and right. Open it (one-handed) to the first position and it becomes a 65-inch screen with a standard-definition 4:3 aspect ratio; open it to the second position and it’s an 80-inch screen with an HD aspect ratio of 16:9.

The screen fabric is a typical matte white and can be washed with a rag moistened with water. In our test environment, the Duet was slightly less reflective than our Draper Piper portable screen, but it exhibited excellent off-axis viewing, which is important if you’re entertaining a large audience that can’t all be seated directly in front of the screen.

The Duet’s screen clips onto its tripod stand, so you can carry both items as a single unit, but you won’t want to lug it far: It weighs 27 pounds (more than twice as much as the Piper). The tripod contributes to a rather large footprint: 33 inches deep by 37 inches wide. If you need to keep the screen closer to your wall, you can mount it there—Epson provides the necessary hardware in the box. You can still close the screen when it’s mounted, and you can take it off the wall and again pair it with the tripod to take your show on the road.

The fact that the Duet is $100 cheaper than the Piper makes up
for the fact that it’s not quite as bright; in fact, we think we’ve found our new favorite projection screen.