HDTV For iPod

While HDTV is nothing out of ordinary in most Western countries, there's something really funny about the HD madness in the emerging economies, especially in the former Eastern Bloc. Do you really want to know what I am talking about? OK, you asked for it...a wide range of consumers are buying HDTV equipment, only to use it for receiving non-HD content! Not quite smart, but at least they can be proud they have a HDTV, while the neighbor next door doesn't! Anyway, that doesn't touch me, because I have no TV at all, and I feel great without one, so let's leave these behind and move on to the best HDTV you can get for your iPod, shall we?

The story goes like this - the new suite of electronics coming from Philips, introduced at the IFA 2008 consumer show had a very interesting headliner, simply known as "the Essence." What about it?

No, it's not a perfume bottle, and it doesn't even get near that! Unfortunately, there's no official product page yet, but since this has gone public already, here you have the technical specifications: less than 1.5 inches thick, 120Hz refresh, and a 42 inch LCD screen, coming with a lightning fast response time of 2 milliseconds. Included with the Essence is a self-leveling mounting kit, allowing the tuner, speakers, video and power connections to be separated into a hub for making the slim size mentioned above a reality.

The interesting part for iPod users is that the Essence can use the iPod dock that comes with the CinemaOne home theater system as an auxiliary source(and an alternative to the dock mentioned earlier), together with the USB port and 3.5mm stereo jac, and while it doesn't come with a Blu-ray drive, the CinemaOne is able to upscale standard DVDs to HD resolution.

At last, it is worth being mentioned that the list of supported media formats includes DiVX, MPEG, WMV, PCM, WMA and, of course, the ubiquitous MP3 files. Unfortunately, no official pricing info is available for now, but it seems both devices should be present on the European market in early 2009.