Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Storage

Sure, it’s just a prototype for now, but we can’t help but feel a bit smitten with any drive capable of playing 100GB of data off a single 4-layer optical disc. The BD camp was also touting 200GB, 8-layer discs as they have since 2004 (at least) while showing off the components that will usher in 8x performance (double-that of existing commercial gear) in a more realistic timeframe. When that might be exactly, no one’s willing to say.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Storage

Intel has been touting its 45-nanometer chips for what seems like ages, but if all goes as planned, Panasonic will actually beat the chip giant to the punch by releasing products to the commercial market over a week earlier. Apparently, the six new Blu-ray recorders we spotted at CEATEC will utilize the firm’s new generation “UniPhier system LSI based on the 45-nanometer process technology,” and sure enough, those units are slated to hit Japan on November 1st — a full ten days before Intel will reportedly get its Yorkfield crew out to the mainstream. Bet you didn’t see that coming, now did you?

[Via RegHardware]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Laptops

Just as expected, Toshiba is busy wowing onlookers at CEATEC with new applications that run on the firm’s SpursEngine chip, including one that enables couch potatoes to “control a DVD player with hand motions.” The chip is reportedly able to “process motion detected by a camera and turn it into commands,” and the camera can “recognize hand motions from 10 feet away.” Tosh’s Qosmio laptops are being used to demonstrate the new goods, and it was even said that the lappie’s camera could produce a 3D rendering of your head in order to help you choose hairstyles / makeup combinations before heading out on the town. Regrettably, there’s still no official word as to when this newfangled technology will go mainstream.

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Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment

Thanks to a helpful tipster, we have a couple of Best Buy documents showing a $399 Playstation 3 with 40GB disk and Spiderman 3 (yes, Blu-ray) bundle with an “In Stock Date” of October 28. However, the more important “Street Date” field is unfortunately empty at the moment. While the docs look legit and don’t seem to be Photoshopped, they can still be faked easily enough. So we did a quick lookup on the UPC code and sure enough, while the details are masked, the manufacturer is listed as “Sony Computer Entertainment of America.” Unfortunately, we don’t see the new model CECHG01 listed anywhere in the docs. As such, let’s be clear: this ain’t official. Still, we’ll be paying close attention on October 12th as will you we suspect.
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Read — UPC code lookup

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

We’d like to thank Toshiba for going the extra mile on this one to confuse consumers ever so slightly more. The company behind the HD DVD format is apparently working on a new flagship Vardia DVD / HD DVD recorder (with hard drive) tentatively dubbed the RD-RX7, which is also capable of recording HD video to, wait for it, non-HD DVD DVDs (aka regular DVDs, like the kind your mom finally just got last month). Apparently Toshiba can even fit about 2 hours of HD video onto old school DVD media with “HD Rec technology”, which ain’t too bad compared to the 6 hours of HD video it gets on an HD DVD. It actually kind of leaves us wondering why the hell they’re insisting we upgrade to HD DVD, dunnit? Oh, and the thing also supports HDMI out with 1080p/24, not unlike the other HD DVD recorder being shown off today (about which we’ve little info), the RD-A201. Enjoy.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Panasonic’s got a slew of new set-top Blu-ray recorders today, all of which include AVCHD playback. Further details (like price) are scarce, but they’re launching in Japan today, so who knows if they’ll ever cross the Pacific.

• DMR-BW900 - 1TB drive, 1080p/24 support,
• DMR-BW800 - 500GB drive, 1080p/24 support,
• DMR-BW700 - 250GB drive,
• All three support: 7.1, DD Plus, TrueHD, and DTS-HD

• DMR-XW300 - 500GB drive,
• DMR-XW200V - 250GB drive, also has DVD / VHS
• DMR-XW100 - 250GB drive,

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Just in case you haven’t scooted on over to the HD side of things lately, we thought you should know that the $600 you’ve got stashed away for that forthcoming BD-P2400 Blu-ray player can now be used for something else. According to WesleyTech, the unit has been canned by Samsung, and if that wasn’t enough, those excited about the BD-UP5000 HD DVD / Blu-ray combo player will be forced to exude even more patience until the thing actually ships in December. Granted, Sammy may use the extra time to update the specs a bit, but we feel your pain, regardless.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Sony was all about showing off their new turbo-thin XEL-1 OLED TV at CEATEC today, and we have to hand it to them, this thing is kind of mind-blowingly thin. Naturally that kind of thinness is a little hard to capture in photographs — it’s kind of one of those things you have to see in person. But once you do check it out, you may just find its gorgeous, bright pseudo-HD, 1m:1 contrast ratio picture hypnotizes you from remembering its ridiculously high ¥200,000 (about $1700 US) price and piddly 11-inch size. We want one on our desk, like, yesterday.

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Filed under: Features, Home Entertainment, Media PCs

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

Microsoft’s footprints mark nearly every pathway to the digital living room. On the rich client it offers the software for Media Center PCs with living room-friendly form factors from Sony, Alienware, and a number of companies in the custom installer market. It also sells the hardware for the Xbox 360 — the best-selling product that can stream content from a PC. On the thin client side, it continues work on its Microsoft TV platform for set-top boxes and offers its own IPTV client of sorts with MSN TV, which can also stream content from a television.

The Xbox 360 was the first Media Center Extender that could stream high-definition content from a Vista PC, raising the question whether Microsoft would bring back third-party Media Center Extenders. After all, the first round of Media Center Extenders released in 2004 by Linksys and also offered under the HP and Dell brands sold poorly, and their video performance was so much of a dog that it had to be rescued from Michael Vick..

Undaunted, Apple went ahead with its own digital media adapter, Apple TV, which used 802.11n and a hard drive to overcome some of the problems associated with previous products. And this month, Microsoft raised the stakes again with a Media Center Extender platform and its first partners Linksys, D-Link and Niveus. HP also announced that it would be supporting Media Center Extender in its MediaSmart televisions. Previously, the PC giant had pursued a more streamlined user interface for getting content from the PC and broadband and had exited the living room PC market earlier this year.

Continue reading Switched On: Thin clients take on slim pickings

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

We got to spend a bit of time with Vudu’s eponymously named set-top box earlier this month at CEDIA, but those still trying to justify that $399 price tag now have a bit more info to help inform their decision, with a number of reviews of the device now cropping up online. Among the first to churn out a full review were the folks at Laptop Magazine, who seem to have found quite a bit to like in the device, despite some fairly serious limitations. They were especially impressed by the Vudu’s “surprisingly good” video quality, which they say “makes you forget you’re watching a movie downloaded over the Web.” Leading those aforementioned limitations is the fact that those all those movies are “trapped on the Vudu box,” meaning you can’t offload them onto a portable media or stream them over a network connection. That also proved to be one CNET’s big gripes with the device, who also lamented the lack of built-in WiFi, and the somewhat limited 24-hour viewing period for downloaded movies. Those also looking for an unboxing of the device can find that and more in Paul Stamatiou’s review, which even goes so far as to rip the device apart for a peek inside. As for how the Vudu works, he too seems to have been fairly impressed by the general user experience, although the movie pricing structure proved to be a major stumbling block for him, as was the device’s inability to export movies to a PC.

Read - Laptop Magazine (3.5 out of 5)
Read - CNET (7.7 out of 10)
Read - PaulStamatiou.com (7 out of 10)

[Photo courtesy of PaulStamatiou.com]

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