SITEX 2011 begins today. Although it is raining cats and dogs, it didn’t stop us from traveling almost an hour to the eastern Singapore to check out what is new at the show.

This year, the SITEX 2011 day 1 seems to be quite quiet. The event spans 3 halls and we don’t see the usual crowd as compared to last year.

Major brands were there, mostly selling notebooks. DIY components are no where to be seen as usual. In fact, the floods in Thailand has resulted in a shortage of HDD. The usual cut throat price of USB 3.0 portable HDD is no where to be seen.

Tablets were not everywhere. The big brands like Acer, Sony, Samsung, Asus, Viewsonic are all promoting their tablets. The pricing isn’t that cheaper than at the retail stores.

I have a hard time looking for HP cartridges too. There seems to be only one stall in the first hall that carries it. I got my combo pack at a 20% discounted price and a $5 NTUC voucher.

At one corner of the Hall 6 is Palladine, a local LCD TV manufacturer. They are showing off their new TV hub powered by Android. I gave it a try and is surprised to find Android marketplace on it on this Android 2.2 powered device. The remote control is cool too but I find it difficult to use it as a mouse over the air. It sells for S$199.

Next door is Aztech, another Singaporean company that is known these days for it’s powerplugs. They also have a TV box but it is powered by Android 2.3 Gingerbread. It is known as PlayXtreme. The bundle comes with HDMI, component and RCA cable. They have a very interesting remote control. It has a full QWERTY keypad on it for text entry. The launch price is S$179 which is slightly cheaper than the Palladine.

Below is a 3D Video of the tiny device that is hooked to the 50″ LCD TV.

On the next page, we test run the device.

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