On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

Atlantic Technology is the next company to take on smart speakers with the Gatecrasher 1, a wifi-based tabletop system the company describes as the first in a series of "smart multiroom wireless speakers."

The Gatecrasher1 is a 2.1 system with an array of high-performance drivers, including a pair of 0.75-inch aluminium dome tweeters and 2-inch cone bass-mid speakers. Meanwhile the internal subwoofer consists of a 4-inch driver coupled with a down-firing 5-inch passive radiator. Powering all is a 60W Class D digital amplifier housed in a high density MDF cabinet with either a Makassar ebony or piano black lacquer finish over real-wood veneer.

Wireless connectivity comes through Bluetooth and wifi, with wifi capability including dual-band 802.11ac wifh Wifi Alliance and DLNA certification. Bluetooth 4.0 with AptX technology allows compatibility with high-res audio codecs, and customers can stream from a Bluetooth-connected device to multiple Gatecrasher units. The system is compatible with a wide range of sources, including Windows and Mac PCs, Android and iOS mobile devices, and game consoles such as the Xbox One and PS4.

Xiaomi announces the next device in the Mi Pad Android tablet line-- the Mi Pad 4, an 8-inch device featuring a Snapdragon 660 chipset, 6000mAh battery and a 5MP front-facing camera with facial recognition capability.

As an upgrade on the previous Mi Pad 4 has a slimmer design even if the display gets something of a downgrade from 2048 x 1536 resolution to 1920 x 1080. The internals however get a boost, with 3/4GB LDDR4x RAM, 32/64GB internal storage (expandable via microSD card) and f/2.0 13MP front-facing camera.

According to both Windows Central and The Verge, Microsoft is working with Razer to enable keyboard and mouse support on the Xbox, with said support covering the RGB lighting found in Razer peripherals.

Windows Central says Microsoft briefed developers on the upcoming support earlier this year through a presentation detailing how to enable the RGB lighting in Razer Chroma devices. Such lighting can prove useful for gamers, since it provides visual cues for ability cooldowns in titles such as Overwatch. In addition, the presentation points out rules and guidance on the implementation of mouse and keyboard support for Xbox, such as the fact Xbox games still need to support gamepads and how the console can only handle one mouse and keyboard.

The next battle in TV technologies continues apace as HDR10+, the HDR standard developed Samsung, Panasonic, 20th Century Fox and Amazon, gets a licensing and logo certification program.

HDR10+ is described as the open and royalty-free HDR alternative to Dolby Vision. It promises enhanced contrast and colours on TVs, with technology based on the SMPTE 2094-40 standard. The technology optimises 4K UHD display quality by using dynamic tone mapping to reflect frame to frame or scene to scene variations in brightness, colour saturation and contrast.

The standard does have one handicap compared to Dolby Vision-- it uses a 10-bit colour palette, compared to the 12-bit palette Dolby Vision uses.