ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of computing, consumer electronics and communications solutions, will showcase innovative new products during Pepcom Digital Experience, held during CES 2012. These new offerings include a 7" Android 4.0 tablet and innovative displays that leverage the company's 25-year heritage in the industry and focus on the future of workplace computing.

That Dodgy Intel Ivy Bridge DX11 'demo' at CES 2012 (UPDATED)

Word has been flying round the internet about Intel's dodgy Ivy Bridge DX11 'demo'. Intel's Mooly Eden, VP, PC Client Group was attempting to demonstrate a racing game on a prototype laptop - 'ultrabook' - fitted with an upcoming 22 nm Ivy Bridge processor with a racing wheel attached and allegedly rendering DX11 graphics. However, as is very apparent at the start, it's actually a video, because the control panel for the free VLC video player pops up for a few seconds. Eden then 'drives' a car and after a few seconds puts up one hand and then the other, because as he says "they are driving it from backstage". However, there was no one driving the game "backstage", as it was just a video and Eden doesn't say anything about this at any point in the presentation.

This gives conspiracy theorists lots of ammunition, as perhaps the game was actually played on a high powered desktop PC with NVIDIA or AMD discrete graphics cards? What game was it? Eden doesn't say. "IB can't really do these graphics!" they cry and so on. Sure, man 'didn't' go to the moon, either... However, we believe that while yes, there was a bit of deception going on, it was nothing more than a white(ish) lie. Why? Because Ivy Bridge comes out in April and people aren't going to forget this demo. They will immediately put IBs DX11 graphics to the test with similar games and if it doesn't deliver, Intel will have a lot of egg on its face. Here's what Intel had to say about this demo in an official statement:

iTwin Inc., the company that created iTwin, the world's first 'limitless' secure USB device for remote file access, today announced its new iTwin Multi functionality. This free iTwin upgrade enables users to share files stored on a computer with multiple people at the same time.

With iTwin Multi, multiple users and workgroups can simply and safely connect multiple iTwins to the same computer to remotely access, edit and share files, without the headaches associated with email, VPN, or remote access software. For example, using iTwin Multi, field sales reps can remotely download or upload the latest confidential client contracts and proposals. Similarly, small businesses such as CPA firms can securely share large accounting files and other sensitive data with multiple clients.

SteelSeries, the leading manufacturer of premium-quality, competitive gaming peripherals, today at the start of the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, introduced a new line-up of gaming peripherals. Kicking off the mouse category for SteelSeries in 2012 is the SteelSeries Kana, also known as the Designed by Gamers mouse; and two editions of the new version of the SteelSeries Kinzu, the SteelSeries Kinzu v2 and SteelSeries Kinzu v2 Pro Edition. The SteelSeries Kana mouse was introduced to SteelSeries fans in the Designed by Gamers Campaign as Mouse 1.1, which gave more than 300,000 gamers the design choice and where 60,000 "Likes" determined the winning Black 1.1 design.

"With the Designed by Gamers campaign, it was the first time we asked our fans and followers to choose a design for us, and we were incredibly proud to see the response from the community - it makes sense that consumers, specifically our consumers want to have a say in what we're creating, said Kim Rom, SteelSeries CMO. "This new line-up of mice were each designed to fulfill the needs of different types of players, especially those who may not need all of the customization that can be found in the SteelSeries Sensei."

At CES, ASUS showed off its latest workstation motherboard designed for 2P socket LGA2011 Sandy Bridge-EP eight-core processors, the Z9PE-D8-WS. By the looks of it, it might not be having the voltage-delivery muscle of EVGA's SR3, but it is filled to the brim with connectivity. Each socket is powered by a 14-phase Digi+ II VRM, there are numerous other power domains. The board draws power from a 24-pin ATX connector, two 8-pin EPS connectors, and a 4-pin Molex.

The sockets are each wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, giving this board the ability to hold up to 256 GB of RAM. There are seven PCI-Express 3.0 x16 expansion slots, from which four (blue) are x16 capable, and three (black) x8 capable. There are as many as 10 SATA ports, of which six appear to be 6 Gb/s capable. In terms of connectivity, an ASpeed AST2300 provides basic display and management over IP functions; there are two gigabit Ethernet interfaces driven by Intel-made controllers, two USB 3.0 ports, 8-channel HD audio, and a number of USB 2.0 ports. ASUS demonstrated this board by running two 2P capable unknown processors, three latest NVIDIA Tesla GPU compute cards, and an ASUS-made graphics card. Unlike with EVGA SR3, which is technically a workstation motherboard designed for enthusiasts, the Z9PE-D8-WS is intentioned to be a workstation motherboard only.

CES is officially kicking off on the 10th of January and we are in Las Vegas to bring the latest hardware news. The team is ready to go and eager to jump into the fray, having arrived on the 7th of January. With many manufacturers present, the show is bound to be the busiest one yet and you may follow our coverage on our CES 2012 Live Coverage page - just click the link below!

VIA Labs, Inc., a leading supplier of USB 3.0 integrated chip controllers, today announced its proprietary USB2Expressway Dedicated Bandwidth Technology for USB 3.0 Hubs which dramatically improves USB 2.0 performance when multiple devices are utilized. USB 3.0 Hubs featuring the technology eliminate USB 2.0 bandwidth limitations by providing full, dedicated bandwidth per port, allowing multiple USB 2.0 devices to be connected and operated at their maximum capabilities.

USB 2.0 provides 30-40MB/s of actual throughput, and this is shared across all connected devices. When multiple devices such as external hard drives, flash drives, and webcams are connected, they share available bandwidth which results in severely degraded performance. Compared to USB 2.0, USB 3.0 offers 10x more bandwidth and allows transfers as fast as 300-400MB/s. VIA Labs USB2 Expressway Dedicated Bandwidth Technology allows USB 2.0 devices to utilize USB 3.0 bandwidth, eliminating bandwidth bottlenecks and freeing each connected device to reach its maximum performance potential.

Marvell, a worldwide leader in integrated silicon solutions, today announced new education solutions designed to enable "Classroom 3.0," a connected, secure learning environment that simplifies and speeds the deployment of technology to students around the world. Marvell's collaboration with Stanford University has resulted in the Marvell SMILE Plug, the first plug development kit designed to turn a traditional classroom into a highly interactive learning environment. Designed to engage students in critical reasoning and problem solving, the SMILE Plug creates a "micro cloud" within a classroom that is completely controlled by the teacher. Marvell also announced that it has extended its relationship with the One Laptop per Child Association (OPLC) on a number of new products, including the upcoming OLPC X0 3.0, a low cost, low power tablet designed for education.

There has been excitement recently, that the much-anticipated next generation OLED display technology for consumer TVs and computer monitors will finally make an entrance in the market in 2012. Fuelling this, was the announcement last week that LG is to showcase their OLED TV at CES this month. Sony was also due to introduce OLED TVs to consumers. However, this plan has now been shelved, according to The Daily Yomiuri, with Sony only continuing to sell this technology to corporate customers such as broadcasting companies, along with the associated research and development into better displays. The reason for dropping the consumer market is partly due to poor business performance in this area, so Sony cut back on capital investment, which in turn reduced its price competitiveness with its Korean rivals such as LG and Samsung.

This is a shame, because for a healthy and good value OLED TV and monitor market, there need to be many players competing with each other, which will drive down prices and increase product quality over time. However, if OLED takes off in the consumer space, it seems very unlikely that Sony wouldn't return to it eventually.Sony XEL-1 OLED TV.Picture credit: engadget

Turtle Beach, the market leading pioneers of the console gaming headset category, today announced their line of new products being unveiled at the International Consumer Electronics Show this year. Cutting-edge technologies being introduced in these products range from new interference-reducing dual-band 2.4/5 GHz Wi-Fi RF wireless tech, customizable Dolby Surround Sound speaker angles and a new line of mobile lifestyle headsets designed for gamers on the go. All newly announced Turtle Beach products will be available for demonstration along with the full product assortment, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall 1 - Booth #21327, during the International Consumer Electronics Show from January 10 to 13, 2012.

Having already released a 15.6-inch display (the e1649Fwu) that gets both signal and power via USB, AOC is upping the ante this year and at CES 2012 it will showcase a bigger USB monitor. Named e2251Fwu, the display in question is just 10.6 mm thin and features a 22-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) panel, an LED backlight, a 5 ms response time, a dynamic contrast ratio of 20,000,000:1, a maximum brightness of 250 cd/m2, a removable stand, and, of course, USB connectivity.

The e2251Fwu will ship in February and will cost $199.

Plantronics unveiled its latest headset for professional gamers, the GameCom 780. The headset is probably scheduled to be launched at CES, but a presentation related to it was leaked to the web. The GameCom 780 is a large-sized over-the-ear headset with a rounded quadrilateral shape instead of round, the optimally fit the contours of the ears. While it's 2-channel, it features virtual 7.1-channel surround.

It connects to the PC over USB, and packs a native logic that processes Dolby Headphone and Dolby Pro Logic IIx technologies. Each of the two cans features a 40 mm driver. The cans are suspended on hinges and can swivel to fold the headset up for transportation. The head band is thickly cushioned. The noise-cancelling microphone is suspended by a hinged-armature. The headset has a braided 2 m long USB cable.

MSI is rolling out its new generation GT685-the ultimate gaming machine. In addition to featuring the Intel second generation Core i7 quad core processor, it is the first laptop to sport the nVidia GeForce GTX 580M, the world's fastest discrete graphics card, 32G DDR3 of memory, and accelerated dual hard disk architecture. It comes with Dynaudio and THX TruStudio Pro smart wrap around sound as well as a full HD screen. You'll be impressed by how smoothly online 3D games play and with the edge that your new GT685 gives you against opponents.

The machine won the CES 2012 award for product innovation, seen by many as the highest honor of the high tech industry. MSI, where designing high-end record-breaking gaming notebooks is par for the course, will continue to design faster, more powerful notebooks that follow in the tradition of its gaming NBs best epitomized in the MSI GT685. The GT685 utilizes the wildly anticipated nVidia GeForce GTX 580M top-end discrete graphics card which boasts 384 more CUDAs (Compute Unified Device Architecture) than the previous generation with advanced 256 bit broadband and 2GB GDDR5 of display memory. You will be awed by how smooth 3D games run and the new edge you enjoy in battles will help you rack up wins.

In-Win Development Inc. has today announced its new limited edition, open-frame chassis - the XFrame. Now professional PC builders, PC modders and overclockers can truly test, benchmark and tweak, anyway they want to, anytime they need thanks to the easy, open design that allows fast, on-the-fly changes.

In-Win's innovative X design shape provides both strength and rigidity, while also allowing the frame to stand vertically or sit horizontally on its non-slip rubberized feet. Compared to standard open-frame chassis that can only sit horizontally, this gives XFrame users an additional degree of freedom.

Wilson Electronics, manufacturer of North America's top-selling line of cellular signal boosters, announced at 2012 International CES the world's first 4G mobile signal booster, the Sleek 4G-V.

In areas with Verizon Wireless LTE service the Sleek 4G-V will ensure a strong LTE signal as well as conventional 3G or 2G signals. Benefits include fewer dropped connections and no-service "dead zones," faster data transfer rates and improved battery life for wireless devices.

LG Electronics (LG) will present the future of TV technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas with the unveiling of the world's largest OLED TV with a display size of 55 inches. By incorporating the company's 4-Color Pixels and Color Refiner features with LG Display's advanced OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panels, LG OLED TV generates the most natural colors of any TV set at a much lower price point than could have been achieved using the standard manufacturing process.

Facing a two-front competition from other netbook manufacturers and the ARM tablet industry, ASUS, one of the pioneers of the netbook form-factor, is readying a new line of fashionable-looking netbooks under the EeePC Flare series. Press pictures of these netbooks got leaked to the web by Notebook Italia, which reveal EeePC Flare series to be a colorful bunch of machines that are so designed to look curvy and fashionable, breaking the "compact" design mold of today's netbooks. They will be shows at the upcoming CES event, next week.

EeePC Flare will be available in two sizes, 12-inch and 10-inch. Among these, the 12-inch 1225B will be driven by AMD Fusion platform (likely E450), while the 1225C will be driven by Intel's new "Cedar Trail" Atom platform (N2600 or N2800). The 10-incher 1025 will stick to Cedar Trail. ASUS will pack these netbooks with features such as 500 GB of storage, LED backlit 720p displays, chiclet keyboards, etc.

Shogun Bros. created two new Chameleon X1 mouse-gamepad combo device variants, inspired from the hit game Assassins Creed Revelations. Available in "Altair White" and "Ezio grey," these mice make use of leather and metal buttons on the mouse's two main buttons, complete with some classy engraving and seam. Apart from these, the Chameleon X-1 is the usual unusual combo of a 1600 dpi gaming mouse and gamepad that the original is. Shogun Bros. plans to show these new mice off at the upcoming CES event.

Genesys Logic announced its newest application processor, the GL3620. This chip is designed to be the prime-mover of tomorrow's high-definition 1080p web-cameras, which will strike mainstream price-points. This chip takes advantage of the USB 3.0 interface, particularly its isochronous transfer mode, which guarantees sufficient bandwidth to stream uncompressed (lossless) 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) video at 30 frames per second. This defined theoretical bandwidth limit is about 380 MB/s between the chip and the USB 3.0 host. Lossless video streaming from the webcam gives users the ability to use higher-quality software video encoders.

The Genesys Logic GL3620 also packs native HISP, which encodes RGB RAW data from CMOS sensors to interpolated YUV format. It also looks after bad pixel correction, image scaling, gamma correction, image quality enhancement, etc., to maintain backwards compatibility with USB 2.0, probably albeit, at lower resolutions. The chip also includes a native MJPEG encoder that offloads the host CPU from doing the lossless stream to MJPEG conversion to stream to IM clients. Genesys Logic will exhibit GL3620 demo at CES 2012 in Las Vegas from January 10th to January 13th 2012. In related news, Genesys logic will also demo its three other new USB 3.0 chips, the GL3520, which is a USB 3.0 hub controller; the GL3321, which is a USB 3.0 to SATA bridge chip; and GL3220, which is a USB 3.0 flash card reader controller.

VR-Zone have been having a little chat with Intel 'sources', who have leaked some juicy tidbits for us to enjoy in the form performance and power news. The upcoming next generation Medfield platform is Intel's first true System on a Chip (SoC) and is designed to compete with various low power ARM offerings in the tablet space. To help achieve this, they've gone through an internal restructure, merging four business units into just one: Ultra-Mobility, Mobile Wireless, Mobile Communications and Netbook & Tablet PC. The business unit is now simply known as Mobile and Communications. It's being run by Mike Bell and Hermann Eul and the first product to emerge from it will be is the 32 nm Medfield SoC solution.

VR-Zone explained that the competition will be "Apple's A-Series, NVIDIA Tegra, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Samsung Exynos, Texas Instruments OMAP and the likes. Out of all the chips mentioned above, only Samsung's Exynos is currently manufactured in 32nm process, just like Medfield."

LG Display, a leading innovator of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) technology, today announced that it has developed the world's largest 55-inch OLED(Organic Light Emitting Diodes) TV panel. The 55-inch panel is a significant step forward in the popularization of OLED TVs and demonstrates the effective application of AM OLED technology to larger panel sizes at a more cost efficient level.

"Our objective has always been to actively define and lead emerging display technology markets," said Dr. Sang Beom Han, CEO and Executive Vice President of LG Display. "Although OLED technology is seen as the future of TV display, the technology has been limited to smaller display sizes and by high costs, until now. LG Display's 55-inch OLED TV panel has overcome these barriers."

For those heading to the International CES expo 2012 held in January, it would be a final chance to see a Microsoft booth there; and a final chance to, if you're lucky, get to shake hands with Badboy Steve (CEO Steve Ballmer). After 2012's expo, Microsoft doesn't plan to have a CES keynote, or even place their booth there. The company blames the annual timing of the expo for its decision to stop setting up big presence at CES. It says that its product and service launches aren't able to align with CES' typical January timing.

In a press-note, the company said: "We'll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won't have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don't align with the show's January timing."

In a surprising move, AMD pulled the launch date of Radeon HD 7970, a high-performance single-GPU graphics card based on the 28 nm Tahiti silicon, up to December 22, 2011; from its earlier launch date of January 09, 2012. The January date was a lot more than speculation, as older presentation slides from AMD to distributors and retailers talked specifically about it. The move to pull December 22 (next Thursday) spices things up in the run up for CES. First, it gives AIB partners full freedom to show off their custom-design graphics cards at the event, along with full details about GPU specifications and clock speeds.

According to a VR-Zone report, Radeon HD 7970 will launch on December 22, 2011, this will be the day you will be able to read reviews of the card (at least the AMD reference design board), online. It will be a limited launch (read: paper-launch), but one can expect "full" retail availability of the card by January 09. Another interesting bit of information is concerning the Radeon HD 7950. This card will be available in non-reference board designs from day one, it will however launch on January 09.

We got our first glimpse of the next major update of the iconic Cosmos case from Cooler Master, the Cosmos II, in as early as June, as the Computex event was wrapping up. It still had some rough edges, and we were then told that a market launch was expected in the September~October time-frame. That of course, never happened, and the only other time we saw this elusive case was when it was chosen to house the MaximumPC Dream Machine 2011, in July. Alas, even as this year draws to a close, there's no sign of the Cosmos II anywhere. That was, until Cooler Master sent a press and subscriber email last week (dated 10th December), pointing out that the official launch was about 24 days away, or the 3rd of January, 2012. Just in time to hog some CES limelight.

DisplayLink, the leading provider of technology for virtual and USB-connected computing, and I-O DATA DEVICE (www.iodata.com) today announced the availability of the I-O DATA USB-RGB3/D USB 3.0 to DVI display adapter. Incorporating the DisplayLink DL-3100 chip for connectivity and virtual graphics, it is the first USB 3.0 enabled display adapter to ship in Japan.

"And this is as true in Japan as any other technology-embracing market."

Featuring the robust DisplayLink 3.0 video compression and support for resolutions up to 2048 x 1152, including 1080p, even the newest notebooks, netbooks and PCs can enjoy the benefits of multi-screen computing. And with the throughput of SuperSpeed USB 3.0, those monitors will display high-performance, full-screen HD video, 3D games, rich 2D graphics and multi-channel audio.