Toshiba’s new ad breaks Guinness World Record

I remember seeing all sorts of examples of “bullet time” a year before The Matrix came out, and then I ended up seeing years of knock-offs. This commercial by Toshiba called “Time Sculpture” is “bullet time” with a machine gun. Go ahead and watch the video after the jump, and you will see how impressive simple moves are when put together, and viewed in 360 degrees. I hope that you appreciate the work that went into it.
It took 200 cameras on a rig to get this shot, and the circular rig that surrounded the actors had to be taken out with a computer. It took about 110 hours worth of film with 20 terabytes of data, and it has broken the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest number of moving image cameras in a composite shot.
Now all that is needed is to write a film about this shot. Perhaps if Christopher Nolan is working on an Inception 2, he can use a scene like this. Then again, there really shouldn’t be an Inception 2.
You know what would really be cool? If I could view something like this in 3D. I would imagine that you would have to program that from the get-go, or you could do the post-production 3D fixes that are happening a lot in movies these days.
What I don’t want to see is this technique played ad nauseum. By the way, this is a commercial meant to spotlight a Toshiba product.

The New Toshiba's Thrive 10-inch

Awesome Viewing

With its high-resolution 10.1” diagonal wide-view LED-backlit display, Toshiba’s Thrive™ Tablet is well-sized for surfing the Web, movies, playing games, reading books and more. Engineered with our exclusive adaptive display technology; this screen adjusts brightness and contrast to the surrounding light conditions. You don’t have to squint to see the sheer versatility of this screen.

High-performance for multitasking and
HD entertainment

Get ready for the fastest, most visually-rich tablet experience you can get. This tablet is built around the world’s first mobile super-chip, NVIDIA® Tegra™ 2. So you’ll enjoy extreme multitasking with the first mobile dual-core processor, the best Web experience with faster browsing, hardware-accelerated Adobe® Flash®, and console-quality gaming and higher-definition video with an NVIDIA® GeForce® GPU.

Slip-resistant Easy Grip Finish

This slip-resistant, rubberized surface is comfortable to hold, so you’ll never miss a beat when chatting or emailing on the run. It’s also available six vibrant colors (colored back covers sold separately), making it easy to personalize the look of your tablet. Plus, it comes with a user replaceable battery to keep you going longer.

Better Connectivity

Just because this tablet is small doesn’t mean it can’t reach mighty far, thanks to an array of the kinds of full-size ports you know and love. Swap pictures and files or expand your storage capabilities using the SD card slot. Plug into mini-USB and full-size USB 2.0 ports to share content with your other devices. And tap the full-size HDMI® port to see multimedia on a bigscreen TV.

Enjoy the whole web at lightning
fast speed

Forget about wimpy Web. Thanks to hardware-accelerated Adobe® Flash®, Toshiba’s Thrive™ Tablet delivers a complete Internet experience to help you explore, discover and interact. You’ll experience more satisfying social networking, games, streaming video and more―with all the animations you deserve.

Android™ 3.1 Honeycomb

The Thrive™ Tablet is founded on the tablet-optimized Android 3.1 Honeycomb platform, designed from the ground up to improve your experience with devices just like it. In addition you’ll get full access to Google™ Mobile Services, Android Market™ Apps, customization tools and more. This tablet quite simply delivers everything.

An Array of Intuitive Sensors

This tablet PC knows where it is, and what’s up, thanks to a suite of sensors including a gyroscope, accelerometer, e- compass and GPS. Tilt it into a portrait or landscape format—through a full 360 degrees of rotation. Experience a whole new way to play games. Note your location most anywhere on Earth. Plus, take advantage of today’s popular map applications, photo tagging and more.

Additional Features available in select models

Full-Size Ports

Spread out, connect, expand and share with an array of full-size ports, including HDMI®, USB 2.0 and Mini USB, plus an SD card slot.

 

Resolution+® Video
Enhancement Technology

Make older photos, clips and movies look and feel more like HD with this innovation that upconverts standard-def movies, improving sharpness and color in real-time.

Removable Back Cover

Perfect for stylish people with butter fingers! Our Tablet is set to arrive with a choice of spill-resistant, Easy Grip back covers available in multiple colors. (Sold separately)

 

Dual Cameras

Chat, video conference and snap still pictures through a 2MP front webcam. And use a 5MP rear camera to capture photos & videos in high-def, or take advantage of augmented reality apps.

 Stereo Speakers

This tablet combines stereo speakers with custom sound enhancements to bring your movies, music and games to life in a way you probably never experienced before on a tablet.

 

 

User Replaceable Battery

Keep your Thrive™ Tablet running stronger, faster, longer thanks to an easily replaceable battery. (Sold separately)

New 7-Inch Toshiba Thrive Tablet

Toshiba today unveiled the newest addition to its Thrive family of tablets: the Toshiba Thrive 7”. This compact model has nothing to do with the slimline, 10.1-inch AT200 tablet that the company showed at the IFA trade show in Berlin in September, but it does underscore how quickly technologies and designs in the tablet market are evolving. This 7-inch model is due out in December. (Take a visual tour of the new Thrive here.)

The Thrive 7”--yes, the 7” appears to be part of its official name for now--is the first truly 7-inch model announced with a high-resolution, 1280-by-800-pixel display, offering 225 pixels per inch. Samsung already announced at IFA that its Galaxy Tab 7.7 would have the same resolution, but that model has a 7.7-inch display. For some perspective, consider that this is also the resolution currently available on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1--but because the new Toshiba model packs the pixels into a smaller display, the pixels-per-inch figure is higher, which eliminates the dot-matrix effect that often plagues Android tablets.

Pixels clearly matter. When I tried a preproduction unit in advance of Toshiba's announcement, the 7-inch Thrive had the sharpest, cleanest text I've seen yet on an Android tablet. The text rendering--something I've frequently cited as a weakness of Android 3.x Honeycomb tablets--appeared smooth. Google's operating system may play some part in what I perceive as poor text rendering in other Android tablets, or maybe

earlier tablet displays simply weren't of a sufficiently high pixel depth to achieve the smooth text I crave. 

 

I immediately noticed that the display on the preproduction 7-inch Thrive looked vastly improved compared with that of the original Thrive--the new model had bright, vibrant colors. Toshiba has dispatched the noticeably large air gap between the glass and the LCD beneath, reducing glare to a minimum and increasing the perceived viewing angle. Toshiba also says that it has placed a coating on the screen to help with glare, but the company declines to get any more specific than that.

The preproduction 7-incher felt surprisingly lightweight, as well. When I held the 0.47-inch-thick tablet in one hand, it reminded me of holding a first-generation Kindle e-reader: It was mostly comfortable, but it still had room to slim down further (as e-readers have done over the years). What struck me was how balanced the 7-inch Thrive seemed--it felt as if it weighed less than its listed 0.88 pound, and it felt lighter than the first-generation 7-inch Galaxy Tab, which weighed 0.86 pound. The upcoming Galaxy Tab 7.7 will weigh even less at 0.75 pound, though, so while the 7-inch Thrive is light, it isn't breaking any new ground in that respect.

What the new Thrive has that the Galaxy Tab 7.7 lacks is ports galore. You won't find full-size ports here, though (as you do on its larger Thrive sibling). Under a single, neat flap are Micro-USB and Micro HDMI ports, and a MicroSD card slot.

The rest of the specs are par for the course for Android tablets. The 7-inch Thrive runs Android 3.2, a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, and 1GB of memory, and it comes in either 16GB or 32GB configurations. It has two cameras: a 2-megapixel front-facing camera and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, with LED flash. The new tablet also sports gyroscope and GPS functionality.

The one possible weakness of this tablet? Its price. Toshiba hasn't finalized pricing, but the numbers the company has tossed out as possibilities appear to be a bit steep. According to Toshiba, the tablet will “probably cost” $379 to $399 for the 16GB version, and $429 to $449 for the 32GB model. Such costs seem high for a 7-inch tablet, though it's worth noting that the inexpensive Lenovo A1 is $200 only because it skimps on internal memory, providing just 2GB.

Besides, Toshiba has plenty of time between now and the release for it to revise the pricing. I suspect Toshiba will have to, if Amazon's Kindle tablet proves to be the competitive force that everyone expects it to be.