tv

179 Articles

Xbox 360 And LCD HDTV Rolled Into One

July 9, 2008 by 9 Comments


What happens when you take a little [Ben Heck] ingenuity, a little Lian Li utility, an Xbox 360 and an LCD HDTV and mix it all together? You get the Microvision 360, a combination LCD HDTV and Xbox 360.

The mod is not particularly complex. The Microvision 360’s creator [PvP_LostKnight] only removed the working parts from the Xbox 360’s case and mounted them to the back of the TV. A few of the inputs of the TV had to be moved and rewired, and a repurposed and painted tupperware container was added to cover the Xbox 360 parts. Unfortunately, [PvP_LostKnight] did not post a writeup, and even added “The wiring for this is horrible, I would not recommend anyone trying this.”

Setting aside his recommendation for a moment, a few of the advantages to his design are improved airflow to the Xbox 360 and better space usage. What we’d like to see added more than anything is power integration, with a single button to turn on both and a single power source powering the TV and the Xbox. See the proof of concept video after the break, or more photos and comments at the read link.

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Multitouch Rear Projection TV

May 20, 2008 by 14 Comments


[Christopher Jette] did a amazing job converting a 56″ rear projection television into a multitouch display. His original inspiration came from this drafting table project. The screen is a large sheet of 1/2″ acrylic with a screen material attached to the back side. The screen edge is surrounded by 168 IR LEDs. When a finger tip touches the surface it scatters the LEDs’ IR light. A webcam sees this scattered light and determines where the fingers are. Inside the box is a standard video projector. This is a great reuse of old equipment and we love to see a hobbyist making up ground where manufacturers aren’t. For more info on multitouch projects, we suggest the Natural User Interface Group. Here’s a video of [Christopher]’s display in action:

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Sony XEL-1 OLED Teardown

April 17, 2008 by 13 Comments


[bunnie] just happened to be at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose on exactly the right day to witness the live teardown of a Sony XEL-1 OLED TV. The XEL-1 is Sony’s flagship OLED panel that’s only 3mm thick… and $2500 for just an 11-inch screen. [bunnie] was able to take quite a few shots of the components as they were passed around. He pointed out a few interesting bits about the construction. There seems to be quite a bit of thermal material on the display to prevent “avalanche thermal failures” (which I’m guessing doesn’t look as cool as it sounds). OLED displays are completely transparent and their legendary contrast ratio is just a result of the dark backing material. The mainboard seems to be a bit of overkill for this TV and [bunnie] concludes that it’s just the standard image engine architecture from Sony’s Bravia line put into a smaller package.

Recycle Those Old RF Modulators

March 20, 2008 by 23 Comments


[Shadow] sent in this handy idea. For many, it’s sort of a captain obvious hack, but I’m hoping that this might keep a few of these things out of the trash. He needed to send video around the house from a media PC, and happened to have an old XBox RF modulator sitting around. He popped it apart and located the audio and composite video inputs. To get the signal to the rest of the house, he plans on installing a distribution amplifier that’ll amplify and split the signal to each TV set.