Monthly Main Meeting Highlights
Welcome to our March 2016 Main Meeting.
Tonight; Alex was back and gave us a great rundown on some of the newest
innovations in electronics.
First up he spoke about RemixOS, the Android OS for PCs from Jide.com.
This is a full Android OS you can run on your PC.
Alex showed a video on how version two worked.
The following video’s give us some information on the new release.
and here we have some details of what to expect from the OS.
This is the Remix OS site
He moved on to the new iPad pro from Apple. Here’s the keynote address from the launch.
The new iPad comes in two sizes a 9.7 inch and a 12.9 inch. Priced from at $899 for the 9.7 and $1249 for the 12.9. One of the major new features is “true tone” display, changing the ambient light of the screen to match the surrounding light, for a more natural reading experience. The Pro also has digital cinema industry standard for colour display and a fast A9X chip.
Samsung have introduced the S7 and the S7 Edge along with a new set of Samsung Gear VR goggles.
The S7 is water resistant as Alex demonstrated
and this model comes with a micro SD for more memories.
Virtual reality has finally arrived.
Alex had the Samsung Gear VR goggles and everyone got immersed in the roller coaster ride it was playing.
“Hang on to the rail Bob”
If you looked around you could see the other passengers while in front of you was the giant hill or the drop of doom.
Alex believes 2016 will be the year for VR. The rumour is Apple will bring one out, LG have one (See below) and Google have a cardboard model for $30
which runs on any Android phone. This is Samsung’s third generation of Gear VR and it can be used with older android phones as well.
Samsung partnered with Oculus to develop the Gear VR. Oculus was at the forefront of VR development and started as a crowd funding venture.
It was brought by Facebook for 2 billion dollars. Facebook have a very advanced version for high end PCs called Oculus Rift. Alex describes one game called “Elite”. It is a revised edition of a 1980s space pirate game but now you are right in the pilot’s seat, flying the craft “from one space port to another, it’s like you are in a movie”.
The phone sits in a holder at the front of the goggles.
You down load the games you want and use the controls on the sides of the goggles to watch or play the game. Alex mentioned the resolution of the phone was 518 pixels per inch, great for a phone but at such a close range you may make see some pixelating of the screen, as screen resolution improves so will your VR experiences.
The LG G5 and its friends
Alex had interviewed LG's Mobile Chief in Australia, Gino Casha,
Alex recorded the interview so we watched Gino demonstrate these unique “modular” phones, the LG G5 and the LG Stylus with DAB+
The LG G5 has interchangeable components, LG calls them “friends”. You can swap them around to suit your need. These “friends” include some interesting components. The phone has both front and rear cameras which include a built in wide angle lens. But if you want more there is the Cam Plus camera. It comes with a set of physical controls for shutter, zoom and record. It also has a built in battery.
Or maybe you would like the 360 Camera, for 360 degree photos.
Other “friends” include the Hi-Fi Plus with B&O (that’s Bang & Olufsen)
PLAY for high quality audio.
There is also a set of VR goggles.
Some of these components are “stand alone” and could be used with other Android phones. One last component was the Roller Bot. The size of a baseball it has a build in laser to tease your pets with.
Here’s Alex’s report on the LG friends.
The LG Stylus, as you may guess comes with a built in stylus. Of particular interest was the new DAB+ radio. No longer do you need to run data consuming streaming services. DAB+ is radios equivalent of digital TV, all your favourite stations are available free. Unfortunately, DAB is only available in metropolitan areas but you can listen to FM.
We then went on to have a quick look at the new Domino’s Pizza delivery drone.
Then we looked at the new LG 4K OLED and Super UHD 4K TVs which include
features like Dolby Vision HDR.
Alex explained just what HDR is. The problem with picture quality is in the translation from cinematography to TV. The TV doesn’t have the colour range, a bit like when we had to choose between 16 or 64 colours for “web safe” images. The colours get flattened and dulled down to match the ability of the TV. High Dynamic Range is a way to really define the picture quality of a digital film using the meta data contained in the film. It’s a bit like using the Exif data attached to a digital photo. There are two standards for HDR, Ultra HD premium and Dolby Vision. LG have adopted the Dolby Vision standard. It analyses the picture, frame by frame, and applies the HDR data from each frame to the TV. The other standard takes the data from the move as a whole and applies a single HR setting for the whole film.
Alex was at the launch and showed us the video of a panel discussion with director Peter James (Mo’s Last Dancer) It’s about a half hour discussion.
We had a look at one of their new adds with Liam Neeson and his son in “The Man from the Future”.
Hisense also launched a new set of ULED TV’s using edge backlighting and a new laser technology. Alex spoke briefly about how pixels are either on or off and when they are off they are truly black which give the TV a real depth of contrast.
Last we had a quick look at the new Epson BT 300 glasses.
They are reminiscent of Google Glasses, and come with a clip-on which you can have made with your own classes script.
The Raffle
Thanks to Alex we had a variety of prizes tonight including a Kogan Smartphone, a mirroring dongle, and a wireless mouse.
Here are our raffle prizes and some of our winners.
Our Door Prize Winner.
