We're pretty sharp on the fairy dust market, and while it no doubt goes for a premium in certain parts of the world, there's still a serious surcharge being added in here for transparency. Japan's own Hario is catering yet again to the affluent among us with its Harion speaker set, which boasts a subwoofer, two mid-range drivers and a pair of acrylic tweeters -- all encased in heat-resistant glass. Of course, the company is no stranger to pumping out exclusive glass-based kit and charging a wad for it, as this particular package will run customers a staggering 16 million yen, or just north of $168,000. Oh, but if you and ten others dial in right now, they can be produced and sold for just 10 million yen each ($105,030). Economies of scale, now that's good stuff.

[Via Gearlog]

Even if the economic climate favors RPTVs for one last hurrah, things are looking grim for LCD demand -- just ask Corning, which has backed off of its previous financial guidance for the near-term future. The global economy being what it is, production from Taiwanese manufacturing plants in particular has decreased demand for the LCD glass substrates "more precipitously than expected," and similar pains are being felt at the Samsung Corning Precision Glass operation in Korea. The news gets more ominous still when the company cites uncertainty in both LCD supply chain and retail sales as reasons to decline any updated guidance for Q4 2008 or 2009. It's not all doom and gloom, of course -- this environment can play in your favor if you're in the market for a new TV.

We've seen some interesting loudspeaker designs, even ones employing glass. but the Aura speakers from Paul Scarfe have looks that set a high bar for un-speaker appearance. Though they look more than a little like a blender, these definitely fall on the "art" side of the fence, and specs are unfortunately thin. We're a little skeptical on how the upward-facing tweeter will do for soundstaging, despite the sketches that indicate the glass cone will project sound in a headward direction. Similarly, you'll probably want to add in a subwoofer unit as the enclosure on these beauties is a bit small. But seriously, good looks are the real reason to buy these speakers, and we've got a feeling that if you can afford them then springing for an entire second set of "high performance" gear is within your budget.


[Via HDTVReviews]

If you ask folks around Engadget HD to name a luxurious work of art, chances are you'll hear something like "Samsung LN70F91BD." Outside these walls, though, if you ask around a crowd of a more wine-and-cheese bent, you might get a response like "Verre de Soie Steuben Vase." Those two worlds have Corning glass in common, at least for a little while longer. On one hand, Corning is the largest supplier of glass substrates for flat panel displays. On the other, it also has a long history (since 1903) of glass artisanship in its Steuben brand. Times being what they are, though, Steuben is losing money and the flat panel display glass business accounts for about half of the company's sales, with growth expected to rise along with LCD's fortunes. Sadly, Corning is looking at either selling off Steuben or closing it down. We're hoping a buyer is found; as much as we love our TVs, we'd hate to see them associated with the end of artwork we've seen in the Corning Museum of Glass.

The new NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS might be geared for Microsoft Vista and it's Glass user interface, but that doesn't mean we can't have a little 1080i high-def fun with it, right? Besides, there aren't too many good HD-capable graphics cards for under a Ben Franklin. Hey, since Franklin's birthday was last week, do you think NVIDIA set the price at a C-Note in honor of Ben? While we're trying to figure that out, let's see $99 gits ya. How about Shader Model 3.0 support (we hear it's better than 5:00 shadow support), high dynamic-ranging (HDR) lighting and NVIDIA's own Turbo-Cache technology. Couple all of that with memory bandwidth of 6.5 GBps and a 2.2 billion pixel fillrate per second and you've got a nice GPU for $99. Watch for this to hit the States next month.