Filed under: Home Entertainment, Networking

While everyone's all stoked about that new Netgear Skype handset, we almost forgot that Netgear makes regular home networking stuff too. Today, the company announced its new Digital Entertainer (EVA700), meda streamer that'll even take your snaps n' flicks on your computer across the house and display them on that flat screen hotness that anchors your living room. The EVA700 ($270) has a convenient USB port on the front and on the flip side is decked out with everything you'd expect: Ethernet, WiFi, RCA ports, S-Video, S/PDIF, a SCART jack (for you Euros in the house), and will play plethora of audio and video types, including XviD. Now, while this brushed metal bundle of joy does play 1080p (downcoverted), we'd still really like some HDMI love in the near future. Whaddyasay, Netgear, you want to take on that iTV, or what?

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

---

SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

In a fit of marketing orb-asm, Hitachi just went big in Japan with their Wooo 10000 series of plasma displays with HDMI. The top of the line W60P-XR10000 brings a new 60-inch 1080i ALIS panel rockin' a 1920×1080 pixel resolution, dual-digital and terrestrial analog TV-tuners, and 250GB of disk for hosting MPEG-2 recordings dumped from the integrated DVR. The W50P-HR10000 and W50P-H10000 both bring 50-inch panels capable of a 1280x1080 resolution with the HR packin' that dual-digital/analog tuner, DVR, and 250GB hard drive, while the H skips the DVR altogether while paring back the tuner to a single digital/analog hybrid. Price/availability breaks down like this: W60P-XR10000 in late December for an expected ¥950,000 (about $8,160), W50P-HR10000 in mid November for ¥550,000 (about $4,723), and the W50P-H10000 in late November for approximately ¥500,000 (about $4,295).

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

---

SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

In a fit of marketing orb-asm, Hitachi just went big in Japan with their Wooo 10000 series of plasma displays with HDMI. The top of the line W60P-XR10000 brings a new 60-inch 1080i ALIS panel rockin' a 1920×1080 pixel resolution, dual-digital and terrestrial analog TV-tuners, and 250GB of disk for hosting MPEG-2 recordings dumped from the integrated DVR. The W50P-HR10000 and W50P-H10000 both bring 50-inch panels capable of a 1280x1080 resolution with the HR packin' that dual-digital/analog tuner, DVR, and 250GB hard drive, while the H skips the DVR altogether while paring back the tuner to a single digital/analog hybrid. Price/availability breaks down like this: W60P-XR10000 in late December for an expected ¥950,000 (about $8,160), W50P-HR10000 in mid November for ¥550,000 (about $4,723), and the W50P-H10000 in late November for approximately ¥500,000 (about $4,295).

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

---

SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

A new wide-field sky survey known as SuperWasp discovers two planets orbiting far-distant stars.

Filed under: GPS, Wireless

It's a GPS device; no, it's a WiFi enabled; no, it's a cellular device; wrong again, it's all three. It's Dash Navigation's Dash Express, the new dynamic GPS system which goes beyond today's rudimentary XM and FM traffic datacasting and gets to the nitty gritty. Not only is it able to pull locations you email to Dash Express so you don't have to type or (shudder) speak it, this GPS device also updates current road conditions on the fly based on the speed and locations of other Dash Express users as well as historical traffic data (all of which will be supposedly kept safely anonymous); the device paired with the service will supposedly automagically route you around the next car cluster faster than you can scream at the top of your lungs, "WHO TAUGHT YOU TO DRIVE, SCUMBAG!" Price is yet unknown (as well was whether there will be a monthly service fee -- which we can assume there will be), but apparently this DEMOfall debuter will be ready to ride for Californians in early 2007.

[Thanks, Josh J.]

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

---

SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Spendthrift toddler hits the internet

A three-year-old Lincolnshire computer whizz bought a £9k car on eBay while his mum's back was turned, the BBC reports.…

Worldcom boss goes to prison

Worldcom ex-CEO Bernie Ebbers starts a 25-year prison sentence today for his role in the $11bn collapse of the firm.…

Members of the Second Life online world criticise the handling of a serious security breach.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Hasselblad is poised to launch the new H3D during opening day of Photokina this year. The H3D, as the company claims, is the world's first 48mm full frame DSLR camera, and comes in two versions, starting at 22 megapixels and ranges as high as 39 megapixels. It's also got an eye or waist-level viewfinder, an ISO range of 50 to 400, and can stretch out its shutter speed to 32 seconds. We don't have any info on pricing or availability, but given that its predecessors cost in the $30,000 - $40,000 range, it's a safe bet that the H3D is at least as much, and probably worth every penny to the three or four photographers that will ever buy it.

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

---

SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Gaming

Press releases are boring. We go through literally hundreds of them a day, and for the most part, they're self-serving documents full of half-truths and inflated claims about products and services. So imagine our delight when we stumbled upon this little doozy of a release from marketing firm Ipsos Insight, which details a study done on behalf of the Immersion Corporation concerning gamers' preferences and purchasing plans with regards to the trio of next-generation consoles. You probably remember Immersion as the company that successfully sued Sony over the use of computer-controlled vibration technology in its PlayStation and PS2 Dual Shock controllers, and since Sony has apparently neither paid Immersion the $90 million it owes nor licensed the rumble tech for its SIXAXIS PS3 gamepads, the release comes across as a thinly-veiled reminder that gamers really, really like playing with input devices that shake and buzz in their sweaty hands.

Not only does the (completely unbiased) poll report that 72% of the 1,075 respondents agree vibration feedback enhances their game experience, it goes on to note that 59% of those surveyed would prefer rumble on the PS3 controller, while only 8% care about motion / tilt sensing (sorry, Nintendo). As if these numbers didn't paint a clear enough picture of the message Immersion is trying to convey, two further questions spell it out even more explicitly: when asked if the lack of rumble capabilities would affect their buying decisions (apparently 74% of those polled weren't even aware of the "no rumble" policy -- clearly no Engadget readers amongst that bunch), 5% said that it would definitely cause them not to buy a PS3 and 32% claimed that they were less likely to pick one up for this reason and this reason alone. Now obviously Immersion knew exactly the results that it wanted before it conducted this "study," and probably phrased the questions in order to get the most desirable data set, but even non-statistics majors like ourselves could have figured out that gamers accustomed to the fun of Dual Shock would be in for a letdown the first time they picked up a rumble-free SIXAXIS controller.

Okay, Sony, the cards are on the table, and even if these numbers are skewed, you know full well that you can't be the only player in the game without a little vibration action going on. So what's it gonna be: are you going to keep hoping that some appeals court finally overturns the numerous prior decisions against you, or are you going to shell out some dough just like Microsoft and Nintendo did, and finally give the majority of your target audience what it wants? To us, it doesn't really seem like much of a choice at all.

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

---

SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.