There are two basic things you can rate speakers on. The most important is obviously how they sound. Harman-Kardon have a great track record in this area - I expect the GLA-55s sound amazing. They've got a 3.5" mini-jack connection - designed for your PC or for an MP3 player - and they're 56 Watts, so you should be able to crank them a fair bit.

The second thing you can rate them on is how they look. My god these are ugly. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but this beholder really isn't keen. They're cut glass, and the press release claims that they'll "integrate beautifully with home and office décor", but you'd have to have a very special kind of Disney ice-palace themed house for them to blend in with your decor.

If you're a Disney princess, and you'd like a pair of these, then they're going to be available sometime this autumn. No word on how much they'll be, but if you can afford an ice castle, you'll probably be able to afford these.

Update: Lucy over at ShinyShiny loves these, as does DMJ in the comments. That's 2-1 against my "ugly" opinion. Are you a fan? Or do they make you wretch? Let us know in the comments.

Harman/Kardon

For more IFA 2008 coverage head in this direction.

Related posts: IFA 2008: Logitech unveil Squeezebox Boom, Digital Video System and Z-500 wireless speakers | Writing about JBL modular speakers is easy if you've got the right angle to take

Netbooks are just too big a business for companies to walk away from these days and LG is the latest to be lured into the market with the upcoming launch of the LG X110 sub-notebook - announced at IFA today.

As Zara, from sister site Shiny Shiny, says:

"They seem to be selling it on the fact that it's available in a variety of colours (pink, black and white) but it actually has pretty decent specs as well. It's equipped with WLAN 802.11 and Ethernet for quick connections and has an 80GB hard drive, which isn't bad for such a small computer.

No, this isn't another of the endless teasers about the Dell E, this is actually about the Medion Mini as announced at IFA 2008 today. The only problem is that Medion didn't bother sending out any pictures and, what with the famous Dell pencil, it seemed like the perfect image to get across the sense of what I'm talking about. We found a picture! Well, actually, we borrowed it from Google images. Thanks Chiponline.de

So, the market launch of the Medion Akoya Mini E1211 is planned for October for the rather uncomfortable price of 400 Euros, which works out at the current exchange rate as far too many pounds, £321 to be precise - Dusty Bin not included.

So, the kind of upscaling that Toshiba was talking in their conference has come into force in the form of the Regza ZF range of LCD TVs, launched over here at IFA today.

These panels include "Resolution+", as mentioned before, rather than the XDE upscaling which is what drives their DVD players to "near HD" or whatever the tried and tested legal terminology allows.

It's all quite LCD heavy at IFA today and I've got to say that although the offerings from Philips look the least exciting so far, they do pack the best punch. While Sony and Sharp have gone for dimensions and quality with their super-thing offerings, the Philips 9800 series is pure performance.

But then, perhaps I'm being blinded by size 0 TVs. Philips continue with their HD engine and Pixel Perfect technology but now they've added the LUX LED system, presumably a reference to 'light' and 'delux'.

AQUOS XS1

It's not just Sony playing the thin TV game, with Sharp announcing its latest AQUOS LCD TV boasting 2.3cms thick body.

Available in 52 and 65-inch screen sizes, the XS1 series features advanced contrast ratio of 10,000:1, 6ms response time, detachable speaker system, five 2.1-channel speakers, and 100Hz picture enhancement technology, plus gallery mode for displaying photos from a USB stick.

Medion has announced a pile of new PCs at IFA today, ranging from its AKOYA Nettop PC - a slimline desktop powered by Intel's fashionable Atom - to illuminated monsters like the ERAZER X7303 D Game PC, for gamers who won't even look at something unless its plastered in blue LEDs and has all its things measured in terabytes.

So here's a look at the whole lot of them. This is my first go at doing an image gallery, by the way. Please be gentle if it's a bit broken.

Click on the pic below to start the Medion range Interactive Tour. All aboard!

Ahhhh, Griffin Technologies. If ever someone would suffer should the iBubble burst, it'd be them and they'd end up begging on the streets, probably next to Belkin.

For those of you without anything that requires a dock, then look away now, however, if your live in a four-strong pod family, then do have a listen to what our Susi from Shiny Shiny spied when she knocked on their door of the Griffin Evolve at IFA.

Griffin

Related posts: IFA 2008 Roundup | Video Review: Griffin Evolve

Turns out that Brits are the biggest consumers of digital photo frames in the world - god knows why. They're expensive and not very useful. However, upping the usefulness of these devices is the Compositor Media Streamer. It lets you stream all kinds of content - photos, videos, even movies to a bunch of frames around your house. Susi from our sister site ShinyShiny has had a look:

For more IFA coverage click here.

(via ShinyShiny)

Related posts: IFA 2008: Coverage roundup | IFA 2008: iRobot automated vacuum cleaners

Sony's motto would seem to be "If you can't beat em, make more than em," thanks to the company revealing piles upon piles of new versions of its portable music and media players at IFA today.

Well, I say piles - three main new models. You could pile up three. First up is the NWZ-S630F/S730F - its top-spec video range, with a 2" QVGA LCD screen, battery life that's a superb 40 hours for music and 10 hours when watching movies, plus a pair of noise cancelling headphones bundled with the S730F.

You've read the Cutlack copy, you've heard how thin this new 40" Sony Bravia ZX1 LCD is, now experience it for yourself or at least watch the pleasure of Susi experiencing it for you.

For more IFA coverage click here.

Related posts: more on the Sony Bravia ZX1 LCD | more Bravia TVs

I tell you, this IFA place is great. The show has barely begun and already I'm getting excited about the pending UK release of robotic hoovers. This is actually a little footage I grabbed last night of the Roomba and Scoomba from the slightly "er...didn't they call a film that?" company, by the name of iRobot.

Susan here is impressing her friend with the new Cyber-shot T500, which Sony has just revealed at IFA 2008.

The minuscule snapper boasts a spec-sheet-pleasing 10.1 megapixels, plus the ability to record videos at official HD Ready 1280x720 resolution, in MPEG4 AVC/H.264 format, for proper HD playback on the widescreen TV of your choice - although recording time is limited to 10 minutes per clip. You'll fit a fair few on the supplied 4GB Memory Stick, mind.

There's a very-decent-for-the-size 5x optical zoom in there too, plus you may luxuriate in the joy of having a 3.5" LCD screen round the back for composing your little artistic works properly - and Sony's Optical SteadyShot image stabilisation system will keep things non-blurry if you were on the sauce last night and still a bit shaky. The T500's out in October.

For more IFA coverage live from the showfloor, click here.

(Via Sony)

Related posts: Cyber-shots designation T700 and T77 | Mobile Cyber-shots C905 and S302

And the floodgates are open! Sony's first out of the gates with its IFA announcements, the first of which is this - the BRAVIA ZX1 LCD TV.

Boasting Wireless 1080 technology, which utilises a separate base station (AKA Media Receiver) to keep your lounge nice and tidy by letting you hide all your AV equipment out of sight and have the signals broadcast to the TV, Sony reckons the ZX1 is the world's slimmest LCD - coming in at a mere 9.9mm at its thinnest point.

As well as calming your cable nightmare, the Media Receiver also has a built-in an MPEG4 AVC-HD2 tuner as well as DVB-T and DVB-C3 tuners, so you can bin a few old digital TV boxes too. Or eBay them to help cover the XZ1's no-doubt astonishing cost. (Astonishing cost TBA).

For more IFA coverage live from the showfloor, click here.

(Via Sony)

Related posts: BRAVIA mobiles | BRAVIAs X and W 4500

Well, here I am now at the Sharp press conference at IFA to the accompaniment of some soothing lounge jazz and the humdrum of the strangely polite press, waiting for the show to get on the road. The minute it starts, I'll get tapping away at anything we ought to know.

1pm - Well, we're under starters orders. On the panel today are Frank Bolten, president of Sharp Germnay and Austria, and Toshijuki Tajima, the president of Sharp Europe, looking very dapper and rather important with a hoard of photographers papping away at their feet, the flash bulbs shining off their gleaming smiles. It's starting to get quiet.

1.05pm - So far, we're being treated to a bass-ridden video of Sharp's achievements over the last year, including the 108" TV monster.

Good morning ladies and TD readers and welcome to the Toshiba press conference today coming to you not quite as live as I would've liked from Berlin.

So I've just sat through a rather lightening speed press conference courtesy of HD-DVD depressed Toshiba who unsurprisingly championing upscaling to a version of HD without, of course, a sniff of a Blu-ray in sight.

Toshiba chief, Alan Thompson, introduced the show outlining the facts that only 2% of households have HD devices and that 99% of TV broadcasts are in SD anyway but Tosh do seem to be admitting that HD is the future though. So, the angle here is that people don't need Blu-ray discs. All they need is a little help converting the already shoddy transmissions and downloaded media into a higher HD form.