Samsung threw out the gams and poured out the bubbly to showcase some cool prototypes and forthcoming products at its Global Road Show in New York City. Highlights included:
- A prototype 40-inch active-matrix OLED (Organic LED) television which is HD-compatible and offers a WXGA 1200×800 widescreen pixel format. The display is driven by an amorphous silicon (a-S) AM backplane which enables fast video response times with low power consumption. Samsung’s OLED technology enables wide viewing angles with no color filters, no blacklight, and a potentially very thin chassis: Samsung estimates that shipping display eventually be 3 cm or less in depth.
- An 82-inch TFT-LCD TV with an 8 ms response time and a 1920 by 1080 pixel resolution. The display offers low power consumption and light weigh, and supports 1080 progressive scanning, which is essentially double the resolution of a 1080i display. A built-in HDMI port lets the display be used as a computer monitor, too.
- A mammoth 102-inch progressive scanning plasma display panel (PDP) television with a 2000:1 contrast ratio. The unit also features Samsung’s Digital Natural Image engine (DNIe) which provides for up to 68.7 million colors and a brightness ratio of 1000cd/m2.
- The YM-PD1 portable multimedia player with DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) functionality and a built-in 30 GB hard disk for playing back movies and music. The player features a 4-inch TFT-LCD enhanced by Samsung’s DEi technology, with a TV-out option for playing content on larger screens and home networks. DMB is a broadcasting format which isn’t yet available in the U.S., but is making waves in South Korea for providing digital radio and television to mobile devices.
But wait! There’s more! Not content to rule the arena of digital devices in your office and pocket, Samsung also showed off a new speed-cook oven and a four-door refrigerator!
The Quatro Freedom Four-Door Convertible Refrigerator offers four separate, odor-isolated compartments which can be set to different temperatures, from a slightly-chilly 50°f all the way down to -13°F for hard freezes—or anywhere in between. Need more freezer space to accommodate all the fresh elk steaks from your recent hunting trip? Not a problem: adjust a couple compartments to be freezers. Throwing a big event and need to store lots of party platters until evening? Not a problem: adjust a couple compartments to offer produce-compatible refrigeration. The Quatro Freedom will be available in February 2006 for a mere $3,000, and will be available in four colors (can I get one color for each door?) to integrate into your decor with “seamless harmony”—and there’s even an option for an in-door beverage station with ice-maker! Hey, get a Quatro Freedom and your friends may never go home again.
And it’s certain your friends will never leave if they see your elegantly-named FQ159ST speed cook oven! Samsung’s speed cook technology combined dual convention (that’s hot air from the right and the left), upper grill, bottom grill, and microwave cooking capabilities to create an oven which can be used to bake, roast, broil, toast, and (we’re sure) burn your food up to four times faster than a conventional oven. Hallelujah! Actually, I shouldn’t poo-poo the idea: the only combination convection-microwave oven I’ve ever used (also a Samsung!) was quite useful, and could be used to produce actual cooked entrees which resembled neither plastic nor charcoal. It would have been even easier if that oven had, like the FQ159ST, been pre-programmed with twelve popular recipes, from “homemade meat loaf to mouth-watering lasagna to decadent cake.” Instead, all I got was a badly translated, typo-filled recipe book which said “Do not use metal in a microwave!” on every page. But! Such good advice!
