Here’s some good news for those who live in Canada: you no longer have to settle for playing your Xbox 360 games on that 20 inch TV of yours. Well, you don’t have to settle for it if you’ve got the cash and the friends willing to accompany you as you rent out a movie theater. Playing the upcoming Fallout 3 on the big screen would be more enjoyable than any computer animated Star Wars sacrilege or Will Farrell comedy.

As of last Friday, Cineplex Entertainment of Canada started renting out screen time for solely playing Xbox 360. Wait, what about the PS3 or Wii? Oh right…no one plays those systems. For just $179 dollars and tax you’ll gain access to an entire theater for you and 11 friends for a two hour session. Just in case you left your copy of Bioshock at home, they’ll also provide you with access to their own library of games. The theaters rent time is mostly scheduled for the morning, which brings anywhere from 12 to 24 hours of downtime to the theater. But they don’t mind, they’re making more dough doing this than they ever did in the movie business. Welcome to the new-age of arcades, I can’t wait to see the subliminal advertising.

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Instructables has posted a cool DIY project that provides more use out of that large projection screen cramping your den. The one they’ve built shows this suave painting simply by turning the screen around. Hey look everyone, it’s the great Steve McQueen of Bullitt doing his famous leaning stance and he’s right here in my living room!

Why settle for less when it comes to an impressive home theater system simply because you lack the space available to portray art and media simultaneously? Better yet, pick a theme (like Pirates of the Caribbean) and not only decorate the back side of your projection screen with the theme but also the walls, ceiling and floor. That way, no one will doubt you’re a fan.

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Remember that Nintendo Famicom which was built into an NES cartidge? That was cool and all, but a post on Ben Heckendorn’s console hacking forum by user Darkeru revealed a new approach which may have just one upped it. Not only did he manage to fit the NES inside the cartridge, he also has managed to embed a controller and a screen!

The catch? It doesn’t play cartridges. That’s alright though, since this hack relies on games already integrated into the chip. This prevents the bulkiness of having a cartridge sticking out of a cartridge and makes the system comfortable and more portable. It runs on three N-cell batteries, so don’t expect to be playing NES games endlessly.

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The OLPC movement is better known for its $100 laptops that sport Windows XP.  A new line of laptops, said to be released in 2010, is probably the cheapest touch screen laptop ever. For only $75,  this laptop comes with no keyboard, as opposed to the computer that cuts out the middle man. Better yet, it has a fold–out, dual touchscreen, designed to fend off the glare in the middle of a sunny day.

The designers felt that not producing the laptop with a keyboard would translate into less mechanical failure for the unit. As OLPC strives to rid the world of computer-phobia, it’s designs like these that could one day make everyone a computer-savvy nerd.

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You can go and envy Mr. Rich Man while watching his 70″+ plasma TV through the window of your local mansion. See how proud he seems of his accomplishment? All of these years of work, so he can enjoy a TV. Only if he knew that his measly 70 inches are dwarfed by the humongous MEGASCREEN! A TV so large it’s enormousness can only be explained in all-caps.

Big Moving Pictures Inc. is mounting their 40′ x 22′ HDTV LED displays on the only objects big enough to carry such a load: MACK trucks. Designed to provide video to audiences up to 100,000 strong, MEGASCREENS are the “biggest and most powerful LED-based display solution yet devised.” Yet, they’re still not large enough, dammit!

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This is perhaps one of the most dangerous designs we have seen for a while: TV screens on the sun visor at the driver’s seat. It is only meant to be used when you are not driving, or it’s for the person sitting next to the driver. Depending on what’s playing there, it can be very tempting to glance at the screen. After banning phone use when driving, TV watching might be the next on the list. These screens measure 9.2 inches diagonally and have a resolution of 480×800. They will be available in March for 430USD. –Sam Chan

Sunvisor Monitor [DreamMaker]

 

Swedish company Neonode has started this online market campaign for their highly anticipated tiny smartphone a while ago, and just a few hours before 3GSM opens, they finally showed us a real picture. All we know from the official details is that the Neonode2 is 70g and 77mm tall; but rumors are floating around that the device will be 14mm thick support Quadband GSM and Bluetooth, there should be a SD card slot, camera and USB port, Neonode fans are speculating that there would be some revolutionary changes to the Windows CE-based (Windows Mobile 6?) user interface. The Neonode 2 should be available in Europe this spring. More details till then. –Sam Chan
Pregnant man blog [Neonode] 

Softbank announces today their strongest ever multimedia phone, the 911T manufactured by Toshiba. This slider houses a 3″ W-VGA screen (480×800 pixels) in its 17.9mm thin sliding body (4mm thinner than the Toshiba W52T slider, 51×112x17.9mm 142g). The phone runs on Softbank’s 3.6Mbps HSDPA network, receives One-Seg digital TV service, comes with Bluetooth A2DP profile so you can connect your stereo headphones wirelessly, you can also stream music to supported bluetooth HiFi’s. Toshiba has partnered Oakley to design a pair of sunglasses with stereo bluetooth headphones on it, these cool looking glasses will come with the phone as you buy it, so be prepared to pay for quite a bit. The camera is a 3.2 megapixel CMOS with autofocus and anti-handshake functions; internal memory is 1GB and you con expand it with microSD up to 2GB (that’s 3GB altogether). The standard highend features such as MS Office document reader, full HTML browser and Felica electronic money chip are all built in. This mad phone will go on sale in March, expect it to be a hit. Jump for more pics.

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Game developers and hardware manufacturers have been trying so hard all of these years to achieve a realistic 3D effect. They have constantly been improving the quality of the 3D images we see. But there is some inherent problem to all of this: we are viewing the content on a monitor, which is a 2D surface. Only a plane, a monitor does not allow for the viewing possiblities of open space. Neurok Optics’ new 22 in. iZ3D Widescreen 3D LCD monitor is the next step in battling 2D away. While it might not give you the “fall out of your chair” feeling that a beautiful IMAX 3D theatre might, it’s still pretty cool. The monitor makes you use passive, polarized 3D glasses that they claim relieve the problems of fatigue and eyestrain. For basic specs, the iZ3D runs at a native resolution of 1680 x 1050. It features a  nice 170-degree viewing angle, 600:1 contract ration, and 16.7 million colors. Don’t worry if you need to use the monitor for “normal” use, it has the ability to change back into boring 2D mode. — Nik Gomez

Neurok Optics iZ3D 3D LCD monitor for gamers [via Gadgetell]

We all know that it’s beginning to fall into the world of vaporware. It’s the list of products that never appear, the Gizmondo is such an item. The Optimus Keyboard. The supposed full OLED, full color keyboard that has recently been announced to cost around $1,200. If that is the true price, not only will the creators not make any money, but they will join the list with the Gizmondo.

The Optimus Mini 3 is the only real product out right now, and at about $160, not too many people are buying it. Optimus has announced a little feature improvement, the Mini 3 will be able to connect to another Mini 3 to make a sort of 3×2. So a total of 6 humongous keys that don’t do much of anything. Optimus needs to get their real product out on the market. — Nik Gomez

Optimus Mini 3 [via SlashGear]