Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Yesterday Engadget posted that that factory refurbished 1st Gen 30GB Brown Zunes will be available for $80! Now take into account that the original Zunes are getting a firmware update that give you the same functionality as the new Zunes and you have yourself one hell of a bargain. The only problem I have no is that the Zune is not widely available in the UK. If I could get a Zune for $80/£40 I would buy one just for the sake of it and so I could compare it to my iPod.

I am not a big fan of Apple, but I am not Microsoft Fanboy, so I am glad the Microsoft are trying to compete with the iPod. While the Zune is no where near as popular as the iPod i think Microsoft have enough resources to keep improving it as the generations go on and hopefully they will take some of the market off Apple.  I am still hoping that Archos/Cowon/Creative/iRiver will release something that becomes as popular as the iPod and I would predict my next portable audio/video purchase would be an Archos as I am rather fond of the Archos 605 WiFi 160GB but at nearly £300 its a little pricey for my at the moment

Ah well more Zune new for you. Engadget has put up a comparison of the Zune’ and Apples. This should help show you which player is the best in terms of spec.

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As a follow up to our previous post about the Zune there is a Youtube video with Bill Gates and users showing off its new Interface.

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So there has been a lot of talk about OLED TVs over the years and not much delivery. Sony is now saying that they will be delivering the new OLED TVs to Japan in December! Hurrah!

Don’t know what OLED TVs are? Well these are Organic LCD TVs, an OLED (Organic light-emitting diode) has a great benefit over traditional LEDs because they do not require a backlight to function, this therefore draws considerably less power than a normal LED and helps improve the contrast ratio. They are also more efficient to produce than traditional LCDs and Plasma, so why aren’t we using them already? Well they have some pretty serious degradation problems with life spans of around 5,000 hours (worse than plasma).

However it would appear that Sony have been doing some wizardry and managed to get them OLEDs to degrade at a more reasonable rate. So what is the consumer going to expect from these TVs? Well Sony showed off 2 versions recently.

The first was a tiny 11” OLED Screen, what is so special about that I hear you ask, well this particular screen is a mere 3mm thin!!!!!

The second is a more usable 27” prototype, ok it is not as big as most LCDs out there but what makes this special is the 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and 1080p! Now considering the top of the range 52” HD X Series from Sony only has a 7000:1 contrast ration that is one hell of a contrast!