Darryl Wilkinson

Sony is the best brand around - or so say the majority of the 2,351 U.S. adults surveyed online by Harris Interactive between June 7 and 13, 2006. This marks the seventh consecutive year that Sony has made it to the top spot beating out other brands such as Dell, Coca-Cola, Ford, Honda, and Apple.

Gefen's new analog-to-digital video scaler takes the VGA output from a single analog video source, such as a computer's analog video output or a DVD player's component video output, and scales it to 1280 x 1024 (for computers) or 1080i (for HDTVs). The input resolution is automatically detected while the output resolution and refresh rate can be selected through the unit's on-screen display menu or front panel push buttons. As a result, the company says, installation can be accomplished "in seconds." (That seems a bit optimistic, unless they're talking about double or maybe even triple digits. But we get the point.)

Explay, a company focused on developing "nano-projector engines" to be used in a variety of consumer electronics products", says it has tested its nano-projector technology with several mobile devices (things like cell phones, digital camcorders, and portable media players) and successfully produced "eye-safe, always focused images".

Reuters reports that Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida provided this bit of corporate wisdom at an annual shareholders' meeting: "We have not given up on a unified format. We would like to seek ways for unifying the standards if opportunities arise." Mr. Nishida may have brought up (again) the idea of a single, unified format due to the fact that initial consumer response to HD DVD has not been overwhelming. Perhaps he was engaged in a bit of wishful thinking after it became clear that Sony will delay the introduction of its BDP-S1 Blu-ray Disc player until sometime in late October. Maybe he was acknowledging the fact that most consumers couldn't care less which format becomes a de facto standard as long as there's only one format.