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Best known for its decentralized file transfer system, BitTorrent (download) has joined with digital television manufacturer Vestel to create the first TV that comes with torrent support baked in, the two companies announced today at IFA in Berlin. Originally announced in January at CES 2011, the BitTorrent Certified televisions will be able to download, play back, and share media, including videos you've shot on your cell phone, high-resolution photos, and BitTorrent's growing library of legally shared media content.

The library of legal content isn't the only aspect of BitTorrent's business that's growing. The company claims … Read more

BERLIN--Critics rightly gripe about the annoyance of wearing glasses to watch 3D video, but Toshiba believes now is the time to move engineering prototypes for no-glasses 3D to the market.

At the IFA show here, the Japanese electronics company unveiled its new 55LZ2, a large-screen 55-inch TV that can be viewed from a wide range of angles in 3D.

3D works by showing separate views to the left and right eyes; the brain reconstructs the 3D world from the two images. Toshiba's TV uses numerous tiny lenses to direct two different views in slightly different directions so each eye sees something different. That's easier to do with a single viewer at a fixed distance to the screen, but harder with multiple viewers. Toshiba's 55LZ2 divides the overall viewing area into nine separate regions so people can use the 3D over a broad range of angles. … Read more

Along with the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Tab 7.7, Samsung trotted out three new Bada smartphones at IFA today, the Samsung Wave 3, Wave M, and Wave Y.

All three of the handsets will run the Bada 2.0 mobile operating system, which brings new capabilities such as multitasking, voice recognition, NFC support, and Wi-Fi Direct, and uses the TouchWiz interface. The trio will also come with Samsung's App store, and the company's new ChatOn cross-platform instant messaging system.

The Wave 3 is the flagship model, with its 4-inch Super AMOLED touch screen, 1.4GHz processor, … Read more

Samsung announces the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and Note that blur the line between smartphone and tablet, George Lucas has made more changes to the original Star Wars trilogy for release on Blu-ray, and Apple loses yet another prototype iPhone at a bar.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

BERLIN--Toshiba, trying again to gain a foothold in the tablet market, introduced the AT200 Android tablet today, a Honeycomb-powered model with a 10.1-inch screen.

The tablet, like Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1, has a screen resolution of 1280x800. It's 7.7mm thick and the Wi-Fi-only model weighs 558 grams--measurements Toshiba is very excited about as a sales pitch.

"People like thin and light," said Steve Crawley, Toshiba's senior manager for tablet product development, at the IFA electronics show here. Toshiba boasts that's the thinnest and lightest for a tablet in its screen size. … Read more

BERLIN--In the world of TV, the move beyond channel surfing to applications is working, Samsung executives said today.

At the beginning of 2011, Samsung set a goal of 1,000 apps for its Smart TV line by the end of the year, said Michael Zoeller, Samsung's European marketing director for TV an audiovisual products, speaking at the IFA electronics show here. "We now have 900. We should reach 1,000 by the end of September," with 10 new apps a day, he said.

The success is fueled by video-on-demand apps, Zoeller said. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's … Read more

BERLIN--With its new Galaxy Note, Samsung is adding another size category to its already broad range of Android devices.

The company already had more conventionally sized Android smartphones with its Galaxy S line, larger tablets such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9, and intermediate ones such as the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab and the new Galaxy Tab 7.7. The Galaxy Note is basically a very large smartphone, though, with a 5.3-inch screen and Android 2.3, aka Gingerbread, which is designed for phones, not tablets.

Samsung announced the Galaxy Note at the IFA electronics show … Read more

BERLIN--Samsung, the most aggressive backer of Android tablets, announced the Galaxy Tab 7.7 today, a model that brings a dual-core processor and the company's Super AMOLED Plus display technology to the line.

Apple's iPad line still dominates the tablet market, but those using Google's Android operating system are trying hard to find a place. Samsung's announcement at the IFA electronics show here follows Sony's yesterday and more from other players, too.

The Galaxy Tab 7.7 display uses the company's active matrix organic light-emitting diode technology, which Samsung says will mean good contrast, brightness, and colors. The resolution--1,280x800 with a 7.7-inch diagonal--is a bit bigger than the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab that debuted a year ago with a 1,280x600 resolution. … Read more

BERLIN--The PlayStation Network, Sony's hacker-beleaguered online gameplay system, has recovered from its earlier woes and is growing again, Chief Executive Howard Stringer said today.

"I'm pleased to tell you that the PSN is more secure and better than ever," Stringer said at a news conference at the IFA electronics show here. "We are aggressively expanding its content. We have more than 3 million new customers since the network came back online, and sales are exceeding what we had before the cyberattacks."

Stringer gave the impression he was trying to take the offensive in his … Read more