The European Commission (EC) has accused six TV and monitor companies of running a cartel in the cathode-ray tube (CRT) market, charging the companies after a two-year long investigation.

The companies in question are Philips, LG Electronics, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Matsushita, Samsung and Toshiba .

The complaint is that the manufacturers colluded in an effort to keep CRT screen prices artificially high in the midst of falling demand. CRT TVs and monitors have almost completely left the market, at least in western Europe, and the Japanese and North American markets, replaced by thinner LCD sets.

However, the CRT sets are “still widely used in Southern and Eastern Europe, especially for TVs,” as well as “still made for a couple of emerging markets,” says EC spokesperson Jonathan Todd.

Read the original via ComputerWorld

written by NewsFeeder \\ tags: CRT, TV Makers

Myka has launched the Myka ION media center set-top box this weekend, giving users a one-stop shop for Internet video services and video playback via your HDTV.

The ION has an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz Processor 330,a NVIDIA ION Graphics Processor, as well as 4GB of RAM, ten USB 2.0 ports, VGA / DVI / HDMI outputs, an eSATA connector and Ethernet.

“Technology has finally caught up with what consumers want out of Internet video services,” said Myka President Dan Lovy. “They want to be freed from their computers and watch the growing variety of Web video content on their large-screen, high-definition living room TVs. And they want to do it without a lot of hassle and without video quality suffering.

You can add a Blu-ray drive, HDD and Wi-Fi module, but that will increase the price significantly.

Prices start at $379 USD.

This will be interesting when it hits the uk

the original via Afterdawn

written by NewsFeeder \\ tags: AfterDawn, hardware

According to new figures from Net Applications, both Firefox and Google Chrome continue to wrestle away market share from long time leader Internet Explorer, with Chrome seeing the strongest growth.

Chrome saw over 10 percent growth to reach 3.58 percent market share, while Firefox continued its ascent moving to 24.07 percent. Apple’s Safari still remains in third at 4.42 percent share, mainly due to increased Mac sales.

Net Applications says given Chrome’s growth and recent beta release of Chrome 4, the browser will likely surpass Safari, and the 5 percent mark, by February of next year.

Also interestingly was the numbers behind Internet Explorer, which although still the clear market leader at 64.64 percent, is a far cry from the 93 percent share it owned in 2003. Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s most recent update to the browser, had 18.1 percent share, moving it to within days of surpassing Internet Explorer 7 at 18.2. The eight-year-old and extremely inefficient Internet Explorer 6 remained the leader for the pack, at 23.2 percent.

IE6 remains the leader despite Microsoft’s plea for users to stop using the browser.

Read the original via Afterdawn

written by NewsFeeder \\ tags: explorer, market share, Microsoft

Confirming the news that has been bugging Nintendo investors for months, president Satoru Iwata says Wii sales are completely stagnant at this point, partially due to the lack of “must-have” games and accessories.

Nintendo’s president has admitted that sales of the Wii console have stalled, in part due to a lack of must-have software.

Recently quarterly earnings showed sales had fallen 40 percent year-on-year, from 10 million in the first six months of 2008 to 5.75 million in 2009.

“Wii has stalled,” Iwata adds. “We were unable to continually release strong software, and let the nice mood cool. We were unable to show a new game to become ‘the next thing.’ In the game market, once you’ve lost the momentum, it takes time to recover.”

“With the price drop, sales returned to a certain level, but they just did not reach the level of last year around this time. We decided that it would be difficult to sell enough to recover from the poor performance of the first half of the year.”

Read the original via Afterdawn

written by NewsFeeder \\ tags: AfterDawn, hardware