Two new soundbar speaker and TV Base have enriched the Sony offer of home entertainment devices. Soundbar HT-CT770 and HT-CT370 are characterized by modern design, and sound environment that they make fills the room with a virtual surround sound and powerful bass. Model CT770 offers 330 W total output power, 2x20mm tweeter unit and 160-millimeter subwoofer. CT370 delivers 300 watts in a smaller footprint.

Qualcomm introduced successor of powerful Snapdragon 800 which was unveiled in January. The new Snapdragon chip is labeled 805, and among other things brings support for 4K video.

Company Singulus Technologies has developed a new line for reproduction called Bluline III which is intended to produce three-layer Blu-ray disc with a capacity of 100 GB. Equipment for the production of new drives is based on the technology of the existing machinery lines Bluline II used for the reproduction of a double-layer Blu-ray discs.

Judging by the moves of some Japanese manufacturers, we are about to enter a period of ultra high-definition television [this is not really a big surprise as they created the name a few months ago –Ed]. Sharp is releasing a new model, the ICC Purios and it is supposed to be the best and most expensive TV available from this manufacturer. Nothing unusual if we consider that we are talking about UHD TV screen with a diagonal of 60 inches.

Tablets.  I love tablets, those imminently portable magical slates that fit in a jacket pocket and not only hold several thousand novels but let me check my e-mail, update my Facebook status, surf the web and play Angry Birds any time I want.  The problem with tablets is that until relatively recently they were priced out of the range of the average consumer.  Yes, the folks in the ivory tower of Apple have made them available for many years but only to what amounts to the elite of the consumer world.  Things have changed, and are changing more by the day. 

Ortustech (Ortus Technology) is a Japanese company that specializes in the development and production of small to medium-sized monitors, mainly for industrial and special applications. Their latest product is a monitor screen with diagonal of 9.6 inches (24.4 cm), which can boast a resolution of 3840 x 2160 which puts it in the category of Ultra HD (4K) monitors.

One of the hottest topics last month at the IFA trade show in Berlin was certainly the new 4K technology. It's not some kind of out-of-this world technology, it's just the next step in increasing resolution and reaching around 4,000x2,000 to 4,000x3,000. The devices with this resolution are still very rare, and are expected to be presented in more detail at the 2013 International CES annual consumer technology show [We will be covering this show again and hope to get you more information]. This week CEA (Consumers Electronics Association) announced that 4K will be known as Ultra High-Definition, or simply Ultra HD.

Many of the new smartphones launched recently are still using the relatively low resolution of 1280x720 or similar. However, Sharp is looking to set a new trend here. As devices these days get faster processors, more RAM, bigger internal storage, displays still remain below full HD, even though 1080p has been around quite a while. Sharp wants to make new displays that will have 1920x1080 resolution with 443ppi. If you compare this to the Samsung Galaxy III with 1280x720 @306ppi, or Iphone's 1136x640 @326ppi it is quite an upgrade.

Yesterday Apple released iOS 5.1 for Apple TV. It brought few new things but nothing spectacular. The most noticeable is custom network configurations that can be set up by the Apple configurator. This application allows a user to configure and control multiple iOS devices they have in household. The latest update brings some new features beside the usual stability and performance fixes, so users will now be able to save multiple iTunes accounts and switch between them. Also Apple has added support for Shared Photo Streams and AirPlay broadcasting from Apple TV to all other devices.

A few years ago there was a big craze for home media players these devices were intended to make the watching of digital media on a TV much easier. Unfortunately the trend did not catch on all that well due to the heavy integration of many Media Player features into HD TVs. There was also a problem with the unfortunate fact that most media players used the same SoC, Media Playback CODEC and OS. It meant that in many cases there was little to differentiate products other than the brand name. Now things have changed a little as many of the original players have dropped from the market. Now the remaining companies are looking into different processors and also operating systems. Today we are taking a look at one from Patriot, the PBO Alpine. This is an extension of the original Patriot Box Office media player and offers a few improvements to the line. One of the more interesting ones is the use of Android 2.2 as the OS. So let’s check out the PBO Alpine to see what it brings to the table and if it is worth your time and money.