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Samsung revolutionise its DVD Players look!
The new Samsung DVD-F1080 becomes a true ‘home decoration’ appliance with high-end performances and the ability to playback almost any video format upto 1080p (that is: full HD) with the most popular multimedia formats like DivX, MP3, WMA, JPEG and MPEG-4 clips.

Samsung DVD-F1080 technical details at a glance:

PMA 2008 opens on January 31st: there’s already a host of new products, some of them unofficially introduced, a lot of web speculations and too much rumors.

Among the tech trends for 2008 we can spot for sure:

• CCDs are getting past 12/14 MP, 10 MP is now pretty commonplace, although lens quality still matters (and we mean the lenses which sometimes are part of bundle kits),

• Live View: being able to pre-view not only through the viewfinder will become common feature among DSLRs, at last,

• extended dynamic range: in a nutshell the range of luminosity the CCD is able to catch, a much better and technical explanation may be found here on CambridgeInColour.com. Many digital camera are introducing/will introduce algorithms to enhance dynamic range so we’ll have to sort out which just fits better our pictures.

Some of the new products we already know something about:

- Canon introduces EOS Rebel XSI (in Europe AKA 450D) that goes far beyond the best-seller Rebel XTi (AKA 400D) with a 12 Megapixel CCD, Live View mode, SD/SDHC card support, a 3″ display and much more: watch out for this, it’s gonna mean a lot of rock’n'roll again for Canon;
- Pentax introduces K200D and Pentax K20D: the first is an entry-level 10 MP DSLR sporting several smart features.
The Pentax K20D features Live View, raises up the ante to 14 MP (!) and extends the previous K10D with a tougher body, new lenses and (need to say?) extended dynamic range;

- Samsung presents GX-20: almost the same as Pentax’s K20D just ‘dressed’ by Samsung; aggressive pricing and kit bundling will give competitors some trouble from this prosumer DSLRs couple;
- Fujifilm announced many new compact cameras as well as the new S100fs: a high-level bridge camera (bridging compact and DSLR, that is) that takes the place for the (glorious, we still love it) Finepix S9100 (AKA S9600).
The 2/3″ CCD reaches now 11 Megapixel, focal length is now 28-400mm (previously the S9100/S9600 lens was 28-300 mm) with optical stabilizer.
Yet again the S100fs its own extended dynamic range system (more to investigate on this) and the brand new Film Simulation mode (hence the name FS) already used in the award-winning DSLR S5 Pro.
Brand new cameras are the S1000fd, self-dubbed “the smallest 12X zoom compact camera”, and the S8100fd, now with 10 MP sensor, that replaces the (still young) S8000fd.

Still many upcoming new products in the next days, both lenses, accessories and memory card.

Goin’ to Las Vegas? Check here for more info on PMA 2008.

We all love the quality and controls of DSLRs, full-featured cameras. But, we are also well aware of the downsides when it comes to carrying around all that weight: camera body, lenses, accessories. Yet, there’s no such thing as a super-featured compact camera but… here’s where SourceCrowd.com comes in!Meet the Samsung S1050 and Canon PowerShot A710 IS , two compact cameras with truly impressive features. They both sport a 35-190 mm zoom (in 35 mm equivalent format) and have the three magic letters sought after by all serios photoamateurs: M, S and A.
This means that these tiny toys will allow for full manual exposure control, be it “M”anual, “A”perture priority or “S”peed priority -based.

Both cameras will give you superior shake reduction through state-of-the-art controls.
A few differences: the Samsung sports a 10 Megapixel CCD, the Canon has a 7.1 MP sensor. While the Samsung has (only) a huge 3″ LCD display, the Canon gives you an option that is getting harder and harder to find these days in the compact sector of the market: an eye-level viewfinder. In fact, lately only a few compact cameras still have an optical or even an electronic viewfinder, which is left off in favour of wider displays.
Canon gets you up to 800 ISO whereas Samsung gets you even further to 1600 ISO.

An additional kit is available from Opteka, the Canon PowerShot A710 A700 Professional HD² Digital Accessory Kit, offering telephoto and wide-angle additional conversion lenses, filter sets and portable tripod.

If you are only interested in the wide end of the spectrum, then have a look at the Opteka .42x Wide Angle Panoramic Macro Fisheye Lens .

In both cases, early users around the world are giving raving reviews to both cameras.

Prices?

US$ 279.99 for the Canon PowerShot A710 IS and US$ 230 for the Samsung S1050.