Mitsubishi's 65-inch LaserVue priced at CEDIA: $6,999

Back in Spring, John Sciacca discussed Mitsubishi's new LaserVue HDTVs. Mitsubishi officially showed off its new screens a few months ago, but while it was happy to show off the TV's technical attributes, it was reticent to offer any specific pricing information. Finally, at CEDIA 2008, Mitsubishi has finally revealed the number to match the funky screen.
In case you've forgotten, the LaserVue is a laser-based HDTV. Instead of using LCDs or plasma, it uses an array of red, green, and blue lasers to project its image onto the screen. According to Mitsubishi, it delivers a color gamut over 200% NTSC standard, and consumes less than 200 watts (significantly less than LCD and plasma screens). The company even claims that it can run indefinitely, without the light source "burning out" or otherwise dimming (a problem faced by all LCD and plasma screens and projectors). Impressive claims, but I'll have to see some test results myself before I can believe it.

The 65" Mitsubishi LaserVue will retail for $6,999, putting it on equal ground with most 60-inch-or-larger flat panels, and significantly cheaper than upcoming high-end models like the $10,000 65" Pioneer Kuro. If Mitsubishi's claims about color hold up, we could be looking at a real contender in the big-screen market. The 65" LaserVie starts shipping at the end of September to Mitsubishi's Select Diamond retailers, and will see a wider release around the end of October. Mitsubishi has plans for a 73" LaserVue, but it hasn't announced pricing or a release date yet.

iPhone Apps: Spore Origins Hands-On Edition

I've been running around at CEDIA this week, so for today's installment, on top of a rundown of our app news from the week, we had a chance to give Spore Origins for the iPhone a spin before it drops (hopefully) this Sunday.

As we saw at E3 and WWDC, the iPhone version of Spore is Spore Origins, which is limited to the "primordial ooze" stage you see here, with a limited version of the Creature Creator thrown in for tweaking your bug cosmetically. On the plus side, it's simple and a quick diversion, and it's fun combo-ing your way through 35 increasingly difficult levels of munching little floaties. You can also import photos from your iPhone camera to texture-map on your creatures (Benny's Michigan Fab 5 tee).

But on the downside, the game suffers from the same control awkwardness that all of the accelerometer-only games do—as you can see in our video, the camera had a tough time keeping focus because you're always dramatically moving the phone to try to reign in your creature. A training stage featured a level-like bubble for each axis that showed you when you were at the zero-point, which was incredibly helpful—too bad it disappeared after training.

And most disappointingly, Spore for iPhone does not connect with the greater Spore hive in any way, meaning you won't see any procedurally generated creatures made by real other players of the game via Spore's central server. Kind of a weird choice for such a connected phone, and most confusingly, EA says the simpler Java based game for most other cellphones does in fact have connectivity to the greater spore world.

There's still some vagueness with release date (EA's site still only says "sometime in September") but all other Spore platforms launch in the US this Sunday. Look for it then or soon thereafter in the App Store for a price that'll probably be in the $10 and below range.