Alphason Designs have been awarded the What Plasma & LCD TV Best Flat Screen Furniture Award for its Iconn Series.

Alphason has long been established as the market-leading manufacturer of furniture specifically designed for audio-visual entertainment in the home. Alphasons experience is one of many reasons why Alphason products are the No.1 choice for quality and value in home entertainment retailers across the globe.

At A2000 we are pleased to be able to offer such quality products from Alphason Designs. The 1st Alphason Stands went on our website yesterday and the rest will be available in the early next year.

If you have any questions regarding any of the products on our website please call our sales team on 01438 747 202.

The primary benefit of OLED displays over traditional LCDs is that OLEDs do not require a backlight to function, and consume less power during operation. OLED displays are expected to be more efficiently manufactured than LCDs and plasma displays.

The AMOLED technology have full layers of cathode, organic molecules and anode, the anode layer overlays a thin film transistor (TFT) array that forms a matrix. The TFT array itself is the circuitry that determines which pixels get turned on to form an picture.
The fledgling technology of making ultra-thin displays using organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) is starting to bear fruit finally with Sony, Samsung SDI and other makers introducing new applications.

Sony is demonstrating two slim TVs that incorporate OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology at CES 2007 in Las Vegas .

The 11- and 27-inch TVs are about 3mm and less than 10mm thin, respectively, according to a company press release. The 27-inch model features a full high-definition (HD) panel while the 11-inch TV is designed with a wide-SVGA panel.

The resolution of the 27-inch OLED TV is 1920×1080, the contast ratio is greater than 1,000,000:1, brightness : all white 200cd/m2, peak greater than 600cd/m2. Colors - 10 bit RGB.

11″ - The resolution is 1024×600, the other technical data like the 27-inch OLED
Sony sees the chance to bring OLED Tv on the market in 2007.

Next week we are adding more Plasma Stands and Cable Management Systems to our product collection.

Amongst the newcomers are two new colours to add to the XPC Range. With Samsung’s Series 6 and 8 being a huge hit we are bringing out an XPC with the same fade affect, from red to black as the TV it’s self aswell as a plain red version. The fade affect on the Cable Management is the same as what is on the TV, cleverly it can only be seen in different light and from different angles, exactly like the TV.

The other products that are to be added to the website are stands from Alphason. The Alter Nero is the most popular stand from Alphason, with the front of the stand being made from a black polished glass its pretty simular to our XPC Range apart from it’s Floor Standing.

All these products can be viewed on our website from Tuesday. If you have any questions regarding any of our products please call on 01438 747 202.

Simply put, in 2008 Sony has reinvented the LCD TV. The rather well populated new generation of ‘4000 series sets has banished the age-old criticisms of the technology, like poor blacks levels and unrealistic colours, by being supreme in these areas, while also retaining the established LCD qualities of punch and detail. The KDL-40W4500, along with it’s 46in sibling, is the king of this crop.

Making the W4500 product of the year 2008 was in truth, an easy decision to make it simply beats everything else in its class, including Panasonics new Plasmas. Even Pioneer must be looking over it’s shoulder at this little beauty.

With continuing pressure from LCDs, market research group DisplaySearch (Austin, TX.) has revised downwards its OLED forecast for 2008 to 2015. However, the researchers note there are new AM-OLED applications, and several categories will gain momentum in 2009 and beyond.
Global OLED display revenue in the third quarter of 2008 was $141 million, down 11 percent quarter”on-quarter, but up 60 percent year-on-year, says DisplaySearch.

After a strong second quarter, PM-OLED shipments were affected by reductions in mobile phone sub-display orders, so shipments are said to have fallen by 22 percent quarter-on-quarter.

However, the researchers add that most of the shipment reduction was in monochrome PM-OLED, while area color and full color PM-OLED gained popularity. This led to an increase in average selling price for OLEDs in the third quarter.

“The OLED display industry is changing rapidly, with new companies entering the business, existing companies expanding capacity or exiting the market, and other companies changing their application focus,” said Jennifer Colegrove, Director of Display Technologies at DisplaySearch.

She adds that despite the very attractive performance achievable with OLED displays, and the fact that lifetime has improved dramatically in recent years, and that red and green lifetimes are long enough for many consumer electronic applications, they still face strong price competition from TFT LCDs and PM LCDs.

RiTdisplay is said to have passed Samsung SDI to take the lead in total OLED shipments with 36 percent of the market, compared with Samsung’s 26 percent.

Samsung SDI — which will merge with Samsung Electronics’ small/medium business to form Samsung Mobile Display in January — is still the leader in total OLED revenues thanks to its AM-OLED shipments.

For the OLED market as a whole, TDK passed Pioneer to become the third largest supplier, taking a 17 percent share, while Pioneer’s share fell to 12 percent.

In fifth spot is Univision, and according to DisplaySearch, the top five suppliers accounted for over 95 percent of total OLED shipments in the third quarter.

Chi Mei EL, the second largest supplier of AM-OLED displays, posted record high shipments in Q3′08, while the leading AM-OLED supplier Samsung SDI experienced lower shipments Q/Q. Consequently, total AM-OLED shipments are said to have increased.

You have to be seriously well-heeled to want to spend £3,500 on an 11-inch TV, but Sony’s XEL-1 is so much more than that.

For inside its diminutive frame lies an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) display that promises to change the way the TVs are made forever.

We expect to see more evidence for that with new OLED TVs from Sony, Samsung and others at CES 2009, but to whet your appetite here are seven key reasons why OLED is the future of TV right now…

1. OLED TVs will be cheaper to make

That statement might sound crazy when you consider the price of the Sony XEL-1, but OLED TVs are much easier - and therefore cheaper - to make than their LCD TV equivalents. That because OLEDs can be made from polymers that glow when light is passed through them - eliminating the need for fluorescent tube backlights and other components.

2. OLED TVs can be super-slim

Getting rid of fluorescent tube backlights enables OLED TVs to skinnier that any TVs we’ve seen before - the XEL-1, for example, is just 3mm thin. Samsung, Sony and others showed off their super-slim prototype as IFA 2008 last August. We’re expecting to see more real world examples of sets you can actually buy at CES 2009.

3. OLED TV promises better quality pictures

Because individual pixels in an OLED TV array only light when a current is passed through them, they have much a higher contrast ratio than either of their LCD TV or plasma rivals - black is really black. OLED TVs are also remarkable for their wide viewing angles and complete lack of motion blur or journey - picture quality problems that continue to bedevil its rivals - and also promise greater colour accuracy.

4. OLED TVs are more eco-friendly

Because OLED TVs lack a power-sucking backlight, they use a lot less power to generate moving images on screen. That’s important for environmental reasons, because our current obsession with large flat panels is causing TV energy consumption to go up rather than down. OLED TVs are claimed to be 40 per cent more efficient than their LCD TVs rivals. Display life is also expected to improve drastically from its current 30,000 hours to nearer 75,000 hours by 2012.

5. OLED TVs should be unbreakable

OLED displays consist of individual light emitting diodes laid out on a thin sheet of plexiglass, with all the necessary components included. That should make them harder to break than rival TVs such as plasmas, which wrap their components in glass. This has another benefit too…

6. OLED TVs are more flexible

Literally. Future displays will be able to be printed onto flexible polymers - using inkjets no less - that will enable you to roll up your TV and put it in your pocket. It also opens up exciting possibilities for future mobile phone, laptop and MP3 player designs (we’re looking at you, Apple).

7. OLED TVs are the future

Industry pundits predict than OLED TVs will eventually take over from LCD and plasma TV technologies for all the reasons given above - and there is already a lot of momentum, investment and interest from display makers in the technology. Market analysts iSuppi estimates there will be 240 million OLED displays in our hands and homes by 2013.

New in the world of flatscreens is the 42-inch Philips Essence. The emphasis of this model is a balance between form and function, an equilibrium which it strikes beautifully. The screen unit just cries out to be wall-mounted as it sits only 38mm thick and weighs just 16kg. Its clean lines and contemporary feel would lend an air of sophistication to any room, but this is pales into insignificance compared with how the thing actually works. A single-cable hook-up to its unique connectivity hub means that all content management and playback functions are easy to perform without the usual clutter of wires and multiple remote controls. Philips’ superb HD engine drives the set, giving exquisite 1080p pictures with a 66,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and 2ms response time, plus three HMDI ports for further connectivity.

Sharp bring their A-game with the Aquos LC-46D65E LCD set, which offers a stunning 46-inch screen with full HD capability. There’s also a DVB terrestrial tuner, HDMI ports, SCART sockets and a USB port to allow digital video playback and image display. But perhaps one of the most winning features is that this model has an Energy Saving Recommended accreditation, in deference to its low-power standby operation and energy-saving mode. With a viewing angle of 176-degrees and an impressive 1920×1080 resolution this is another extremely good home cinema option.

Finally, the largest television featured here and arguably the best. The new 60-inch Pioneer KURO KRP-600P is a showcase of the best that plasma screen technology can be. While other manufacturers nailed their colours to the LCD mast a while back, Pioneer has lived up to its name by pushing the envelope of what this technology can achieve. This new model’s image quality is incredible, with some of the deepest blacks and most vivid colours seen anywhere. In form this set is impressive enough too: with a pristine glass bevel and standing 64mm thick it will make a beautiful addition to any front room. In function, the supplied media box is capable of superb high-definition output and the DVB and Freeview tuners add extra functionality to boot.

A pair of reports from display analyst DisplaySearch reveal that Samsung was the top LCD TV maker worldwide for the third quarter, while a separate note concludes that 120-Hz technology is making inroads into high-end sets.

The DisplaySearch reports conclude that LG Electronics appears to be sliding behind Sony in terms of worldwide market share, although Sony maintained its top spot. The firm predicted weaker fourth-quarter sales overall in HDTVs; North American consumers are predicted to purchase the most LCD TVs, the firm said.

In total, over 53 million sets were sold worldwide during the third quarter of 2008, up 11 percent sequentially and 6 percent year over year, DisplaySearch found.

Overall, firms have said that LCD TV makers are buying their panels at or close to cost, making this fourth quarter the ideal time to find a steal on an HDTV. DisplaySearch did not comment on pricing trends, but said that LCD TV market share grew in every region except North America, where the market is flat with about an 80 percent penetration. Worldwide, the most popular screen size is 32 inches, which held a 36 percent share of all LCD TVs sold. Forty-inch LCDs also held steady at about 27 percent of the total.

Samsung sold 22.5 percent of the world’s TVs, which included all of the available technologies, and not just LCD. Sony climbed about a percentage point to 13.3 percent, followed by LG at 10.9 percent. Panasonic and Sharp rounded out the top five.

Samsung also outsold its rivals in both LCD TVs and rear-projections sets, DisplaySearch found.

A separate DisplaySearch report provided a jumble of insights into the technology transitions within the LCD and notebook markets. For example, 120-Hz technology, which smooths the frame rate jitter found in LCD TVs, was found in about 16 percent of all TVs sold during the third quarter. The 120-Hz penetration was most common in sets measuring 40-inches on the diagonal and above, where 120-Hz penetration was 40 percent. In sets 32 inches and larger, that penetration drooped to 16 percent of all sets sold, or 22.8 million units. That, in turn, represented a 33 percent growth, year over year.

The other key improvement in notebook displays, LED backlighting, is not faring nearly as well. Although Dell has led the way through public commitments to LED-backlit notebooks, the penetration during the third quarter was just 5.4 percent. However, due to the commitments by Dell and others, LED backlit-panels are expected to reach 12.2 percent during the fourth quarter and 25 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

Because of the current financial crisis sales on LCD TV’s are expected drop dramatically during 2009. KY Lee, chairman of AU Optronics, the worlds 3rd biggest flat-panel maker told the Financial Times in London that the industry will see a fall in LCD TV sales for the first time since they were invented. He also said that technology will still continue to improve and that sales should pick up again during 2010.

This stand is one of the latest products to come from the S&C Group and has caught the attention of a lot of big names. Appearing in Januarys What HIFI Sound and Vision, heres what the writer had to say about the stand.

When is an equipment rack not an equipment rack? How about when it had speakers and an amo built-in? Thats right, the Sound Space from S&C, is not only a place to perch your equipment, it’s also a home cinema in a box, capable of accepting sound signals from a variety of sources before chucking them out via a six mid/bass drivers and two tweeters on the front, and a downward-firing sub,It’s a neat idea, but not an unqualified success. The unit has two optical inputs, which accept PCM signals, plus RCA amd 6-channel analouge inputs. There’s no HDMI, so you’ll still have to wire your electronics to your TV for video.

We tested a variety of components but the results were pretty much the same. Firstly,there’s no virtual surround processing, so there isn’t even a preconception that you’re going to get genuine surrond sound. What you do get is a nice, wide presentation, that does a good job of filling a medium sized room. There are a variety of modes to choose from, including ‘concert’ and ‘rock’ but we found bypassing these produced the best results. Whichever you go with, detail levels are pretty good and the sound integrates well.

What HIFI Verdict: Needless to say, its performance is a vast improvement over that of a flatscreen TV but being being valued above £400 we expect a bit more.

Well at A2000 were selling it for £375.99 so hopefully that will help you decide.

The Ebony Cable Management System is the most popular product on the A2000 web page. It consistantly out sells everything else each month, more often than not over double are sold than it’s nearest competitor.

The Ebony Cable Management is made from a strong mild steel that is painted a eggshell black (in between a gloss and a matte paint) with three black glass inserts for extra style. It comes complete with two 8mm toughened glass shelves for you to mount your digital box, DVD, BLU-RAY etc.

The possible reasons why this cable management has become so popular are that firstly it looks brilliant, being more or less the same finish as most black TV’s on the market it does match beautifully. Also being one of the shorter cable managements it’s versatile, allowing you to mount your TV where ever you like and if it helps it’s priced at £109.99. Only the Stainless Cable Management System is cheaper at £99.99 which obviously doesn’t match as well with your TV as the Ebony.

If you have any questions regarding the Ebony Cable Management please call on 01438 747 202.