Hi tech gadgets | Gadget review: 03/09/08

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Sony Introduces Wireless Audio Solution For Multi-Room Listening Made Easy

Sony today unveiled four home theater systems featuring the new S-AIR™ technology, a wireless audio solution for multi-room listening.

By integrating S-AIR technology into its new home theater systems, the company will be delivering a practical wireless multi-room solution without complicated set-up requirements, such as IP addresses, WEP keys and pin codes. Wireless audio can be transmitted from the main system in the living room to multiple rooms throughout the home -- up to 164 feet -- simply by connecting a separate S-AIR Air Station receiver/speaker into a power outlet.

S-AIR technology also delivers audio wirelessly to rear surround speakers without interfering with other household devices.

“From playing music to broadcasting the big game throughout the home, our home theater systems with S-AIR technology makes entertaining easy and affordable,” said Brennan Mullin, vice president for audio products for Sony Electronics’ Digital Imaging and Audio Division. “Multi-room audio systems typically are quite costly and need to be professionally installed. Now we have a simple, affordable alternative.”

The four BRAVIA® Theatre systems integrate a high-quality, five-disc DVD/CD player with upscaling to 1080p via HDMI™ when connected to a 1080p-capable HDTV set.

The systems featureSony’s Digital Media Port, which adds controlling, networking, and connectivity for music playback with various optional accessories. An included cradle for iPod players (TDM-iP10) connects to the Digital Media Port to wirelessly stream audio through the house using S-AIR Air Stations. Additional accessories include a Network Walkman™ player audio cradle, a PC client device and a Bluetooth® adapter (each is sold separately).

Featuring Digital Cinema Auto Calibration (DCAC), the units offer simple multi-channel surround sound setup with the use of an included microphone to automatically adjusting speaker frequency, distance and level for an optimal home theater experience.

Finally, the home theater systems offer a Dialogue Audio Enhancer with night mode. This adjusts for low dialogue when the receiver volume is turned low. They also come with an updated Portable Audio Enhancer, which improves the clarity and depth of a connected music player by adding information to the audio signal that had been removed during compression.

The DAV-HDX576WF model includes one S-AIR Air Station receiver/speaker (AIR-SA10) and a wireless rear speaker kit (WAHT-SA10). The theater system offers height adjustable floor standing speakers designed to match the style and height of BRAVIA televisions. This model will be available in March for about $500.

The DAV-HDX277WC model includes one S-AIR Air Station receiver/speaker (AIR-SA10) with an option to add a rear wireless speaker kit (WAHT-SA10, sold separately), while the DAV-HDX279W model includes the rear wireless speaker kit (WAHT-SA10) with an option to add S-AIR Air Station receiver/speakers for multi-room audio. Both of these models will be available in March for about $400.

The DAV-HDX275 system is equipped with S-AIR-Ready technology with an option to add a rear wireless speaker kit (WHAT-SA10) and an S-AIR transmitter (EZW-T100) with S-AIR Air Stations (AIR-SA10). The model will also be available in March for about $300.

S-AIR Accessories

Adding rear wireless capabilities to compatible S-AIR Sony home theater systems, the WAHT-SA10 wireless speaker kit utilizes radio frequency (RF) to transmit audio wirelessly to rear speakers, eliminating unsightly wires. An integrated headphone output allows you to conveniently enjoy home theater without disturbing others. The rear wireless speaker kit will be available in March for about $149

AIR-SA10 Air Station receiver/speakers can be purchased for use with compatible S-AIR Sony home theater systems -- up to four units can be used with each theater system. The AIR-SA10 features eight watts (RMS) of power, with an alarm clock function and will be available in March for about $120.

The home theater systems will be available through sonystyle.com, at Sony Style retail stores, at military base exchanges and at authorized dealers nationwide.

Form : PR-USA.net (press release) - Varna,Bulgaria

Sony Adds New Blu-Ray Disc Players With Advanced Interactivity

New Models Feature Ethernet Port for Interactive Functionality and Easy Firmware Updates

LAS VEGAS, Feb. 2008 – Sony updated its Blu-ray Disc player line today with two new models that will be capable of accessing advanced interactive features such as BonusView and BD-Live.

The BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 models both support BonusView (Picture-in-Picture) featured on some of the new Blu-ray Disc theatrical releases. The BDP-S350 model is BD-Live ready featuring an Ethernet port for an easy firmware update and access to Internet-based interactive content features. The BSP-S550 is BonusView and BD-Live capable when it ships.

Both models also feature an external port for local storage, so users can add optional flash-based memory. The BDP-S550 ships with a 1GB storage device.

“Building on the exceptional picture and sound quality of previous players, Sony’s next-generation Blu-ray Disc models bring exciting interactive features to life and offer consumers a ground-breaking experience,” said Chris Fawcett, vice president of marketing for Sony Electronics’ Home Product Division. “These new devices bring home movie experience beyond the cinema and into a whole new realm of entertainment.”

The players feature 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema output. They are compatible with most standard DVDs and feature 1080p upscaling through an HDMI connection to capable HDTV sets, improving the picture performance of existing DVD libraries.

The models offer 7.1 channel Dolby® TrueHD and Dolby® Digital Plus decoding and bit-stream output, as well as dts®-HD High Resolution Audio and Master Audio bit-stream output. The BDP-S550 adds dts-HD High Resolution Audio and dts-HD Master Audio decoding as well as 7.1 channel analog audio output.

The players support AVCHD discs encoded with x.v.Color™ (xvYCC) technology, an international standard for wide color space reproduction. The standard expands the current data range of video by about 1.8 times, allowing the players to output more natural and vivid colors similar to what the human eye can actually see. The players also feature compatibility with an array of video formats, including BD-R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW (Video Mode), CD, CD-R/RW (CD-DA format), and JPEG on DVD//CD recordable media.

The new models feature a slim design with reduced depth and height compared to previous models matching Sony’s new home-theater-in-a-box systems, the HT-SS2300 and HT-CT100 T-SS2300, also announced today. Optimized for Blu-ray Disc™, the new component systems feature three 1080p compatible HDMI™ inputs making them the perfect match for a Full high-definition home theater when connected to a new Sony BRAVIA® 1080p HDTV.

The new BDP-S350 ships this summer for about $400 and BDP-S550 will be available this fall for about $500. They will be offered at Sony Style stores, online at sonystyle.com, at military base exchanges, and at authorized retailers nationwide.

Form : PR-USA.net (press release) - Varna,Bulgaria

Sony Introduces Wireless Audio Solution For Multi-Room Listening Made Easy

Sony today unveiled four home theater systems featuring the new S-AIR™ technology, a wireless audio solution for multi-room listening.

S-AIR technology also delivers audio wirelessly to rear surround speakers without interfering with other household devices.

The four BRAVIA® Theatre systems integrate a high-quality, five-disc DVD/CD player with upscaling to 1080p via HDMI™ when connected to a 1080p-capable HDTV set.

S-AIR Accessories

The home theater systems will be available through sonystyle.com, at Sony Style retail stores, at military base exchanges and at authorized dealers nationwide.

Form : PR-USA.net (press release) - Varna,Bulgaria

Why Flash price fall is painful for Microsoft's future

It seems that the £200 (US$403) ultraportable Asus Eee PC can do no wrong. The size of a paperback, weighing less than a kilogram, with built-in Wi-Fi and using Flash memory instead of a hard drive for storage, the Eee PC has been winning positive comments across the board.

According to a survey of 1,000 users on the independent Eee PC site eeeuser.com, around 4 percent were dissatisfied with their purchase, 33 percent found the system pretty much what they expected and 62 percent thought it was even better than they had hoped.

Looking through the thousands of postings in eeeuser.com's user forums, the same comments keep coming up: It's so small, the build quality is high, it boots up quickly. In fact, it's hard to find many negative points. One thing that is almost never mentioned as a problem is the fact that the Eee PC is running not Windows, but a variant of GNU/Linux.

Until now, the received wisdom has been that GNU/Linux will never take off with general users because it's too complicated. One of the signal achievements of the Asus Eee PC is that it has come up with a front end that hides the richness of the underlying GNU/Linux. It divides programs up into a few basic categories and then provides large, self-explanatory icons for the main programs within each group. The result is that anyone can use the system without training or even handholding.

combination

This combination of functionality, ease of use and low price could prove problematic for Microsoft. Until now, there has been no obvious advantage for the average user in choosing GNU/Linux over Windows on the desktop and plenty of disadvantages.

The price differential has been slight and there has always been the problem of learning new ways of working. The Asus Eee PC changes all that. Because the form factor is so different, people don't seem to make direct comparisons with the desktop PC and therefore don't expect the user experience to be identical.

The price differential between the basic Eee PC running GNU/Linux and one running Windows XP is now significant as a proportion of the total cost.

That disparity seems likely to increase when Microsoft phases out Windows XP at the end of June.

At least Moore's Law should mean that the price of memory chips will continue to plummet. For example, in 2001 US$8 would have bought you around 8MB of Flash memory, whereas in 2011 it will buy you 8GB, according to projections by Gartner. As a result, Alan Brown, Gartner's research director for semiconductors, says the price of ultraportables like the Eee PC "could decline about 15 percent within three years."

This makes the relative cost of systems running Microsoft's products greater. The argument that its software is "worth more" because it has more features is unlikely to cut much ice as users discover that functionality of the kind offered by Firefox is fine for most everyday uses.

The situation in developing countries is even worse. Not only must Microsoft and its partners compete with new low-cost portable GNU/Linux systems specifically designed for these markets, like the XO-1 from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project or Intel's Classmate PC, but they must also sell against unauthorized copies of Microsoft's products. To combat this, Microsoft has started selling copies of Windows for around US$3 in these markets.

SIZE DOES MATTER

Although this kind of bargain basement pricing helps make its products competitive with low-cost alternatives, Microsoft's profit margin is cut close to zero. That's not necessarily a disaster for a company with huge cash reserves, but it could be dire for one planning to take on billions of dollars of debt -- as Microsoft has said it will need to do in order to finance the acquisition of Yahoo.

Last week Microsoft cut the cost of retail copies of Vista, apparently because people don't see it as a necessary upgrade at the prices charged.

If people don't think that the extra features of Vista are worth the price it makes the argument that Windows is "worth more" than Linux harder to sustain. It's an interesting question: Just how low can the price of these "basic but good enough" portables go?

The original target price of the OLPC machine was around US$100, but its designer, Mary-Lou Jepsen, already thinks she can do better. She says that a US$75 system is "within reach" and hopes to spawn an entirely new generation of computers.

If they're to be cheap enough for people in developing countries to buy, these systems will almost certainly be using open source, but Jepsen doesn't see the zero price tag as its main advantage.

"The true and large value of free [software] is the ability to change and customize it," she said.

In other words, Microsoft could give away its software and it still couldn't compete with the truly open, customizable nature of free code. It seems that the only way Microsoft can hope to get people using its software on this new class of machines is by going fully open source itself.

From : http://www.taipeitimes.com/

ASUS Launches Eee PC with Microsoft Windows.

Yesterday ASUS announced that very soon they would start shipping ASUS Eee PC with pre-installed Microsoft Windows XP instead of Linux. Pre-installed with Windows XP, the Eee PC provides an easy, convenient and fuss-free platform to seamlessly integrate multiple devices, applications and services.

In addition to the Windows operating system, consumers with the Eee PC will be able to access Windows Live, which is a set of personal Internet services and software to manage their online world more efficiently and safely. Some key features include Windows Live Mail, which consolidates all the various email accounts into one place on the user's desktop and eliminates multiple log-ins; Windows Live Messenger to help keep users connected with each other easily and instantly; Windows Live Photo Gallery that easily organizes, sends, posts and shares photos with friends and family; and Windows Live Family Safety, which offers built-in family safety features including safer browsing for children via Web site management.

Moreover, Windows-modifications of ASUS Eee PC will come bundled with Microsoft Works suite, which equips the user with numerous applications that include word processing, spreadsheet, database management and address books. However, unfortunately, not all language versions of the Eee PC will support Microsoft Works.

At this time ASUS doesn’t disclose any details on the Windows XP version that will be built into this ultra-portable notebook. However, it will evidently be a cut-down version of the OS. We also don’t know yet how installing Microsoft OS will affect the price of the solution. The schedule to release the XP Eee PC will be around early April if no delay occurs.

Pre-installed Windows is not the only innovation to be made in the Eee PC family. ASUS has already announced that they will make several improvements with the next generation of the Eee PC – dubbed the Eee PC 900. These new technologies will bring about a new concept for Internet access with 1GB of memory, larger storage of up to 12GB, and wider 8.9-inch screens. These new Eee PCs will cost 399 Euro each, and will be available in summer this year – to select countries on the first wave of launch. All of these new models will be Windows ready.

Form : http://www.xbitlabs.com/

With Blu-ray winning the HD format war, customers now wonder what’s next?

By Crystal Garcia
The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE — With a $10 to $15 price difference between standard DVD and Blu-ray movies, Ira Hall was skeptical about how much better a Blu-ray could be over what’s become the norm.

Hall, 24, of Terre Haute has owned a PlayStation 3 for nearly a year. Because the PS3 is Blu-ray compatible, Hall said he thought he’d try Blu-ray.

Last month, Toshiba announced it would no longer produce HD-DVD players or movies, making Blu-ray maker Sony the winner in the high-definition DVD format war and leaving customers wondering what’s next.

Hall’s girlfriend, Katherine Butler, she said she would recommend Blu-ray movies for people thinking of upgrading their DVD players.

It’s better “especially with movies with special effects,” Butler, 23, of Terre Haute said. “The color is a lot sharper and there are more details.”

Movies that use computer-generated images or animation are also better to watch on Blu-ray, Hall said.

He said he and Butler have been trying “to take advantage of getting older titles with special effects to see the difference” from the first time they watched them.

DVD obsolete?

People shouldn’t let that Blu-ray section of the video store scare them, even if it is growing similar to how the DVD section grew in a VHS-filled video store years ago.

When DVD replaced the VHS, it was a big value to consumers in that they didn’t have to worry about rewinding anymore, said Anand Chokkavelu, entertainment and media financial editor at the financial services firm Motley Fool.

Blu-ray’s backward compatibility helps and hurts it, he said. A standard DVD player cannot play a Blu-ray movie.

It doesn’t force people to get rid of their DVD collection because the player can play DVDs and upconvert them to high-definition, but it’s that same feature that allows people to cling to the cheaper DVD, Chokkavelu said.

“In terms of prediction, it’s hard for me to tell,” Chokkavelu said. “It depends on who wants to be the first studio to say, ‘We’re not doing anymore DVDs,’ and lose those sales. It would have to be a concerted effort. So in my opinion, DVDs will linger just like the VHS lingered for quiet sometime after DVDs came out.”

Bill Ivester, a director of operations for Blockbuster, said Blu-ray rentals are doing better than the company anticipated. Blockbuster is bringing in the new releases on Blu-ray as they come out and adding any new releases that have come out in the past six months to the section, he said.

Depending on the store, there could be 30 to 100 titles available on Blu-ray.

Ivester said he doesn’t expect to see a huge Blu-ray presence in the store until the third quarter, which is July through September.

“I don’t see DVD dying anytime in the near future, in the next year or two years,” he said, because Blu-ray players are backward compatible. If the title isn’t on Blu-ray in the store, people can still rent the DVD, giving the stores and customers more flexibility.

Employees at Circuit City and HH Gregg are seeing more Blu-ray player sales, and customers are coming in to buy standard DVD players or upconverting DVD players, too.

Doug DeFord, sales manager at HH Gregg, said Blu-ray players and upconverting players have the technology to fill in colors on a standard DVD to automatically enhance the picture.

One thing a Blu-ray player can do that an upconverting player can’t is enhance the sound, DeFord said, because a Blu-ray player broadcasts in 7.1 surround sound while an upconverting player can only broadcast in stereo.

“Upconverting players get close, but can’t go the extra mile,” a Circuit City employee said.

Standard DVD will always be around, he said, because there are going to be people who can’t afford the switch or just don’t want to because they don’t watch that many movies anyway.

High quality, high price

A standard DVD player can be found for as little as $25 compared with the cheapest Blu-ray player, which can be found for close to $400. High-end upconverting players are about $200.

Even a PS3 costs $399.99, the Circuit City employee said, which he said was the best value because people can play games on it, too. A lot of older customers buy them because their children and grandchildren play the games and they watch movies with it, he said.

Prices for Blu-ray players were in the $1,000 range about 11⁄2 years ago, but DeFord said the Blu-ray player prices are coming down faster than DVD players did when they were first introduced.

Differences are visibly noticeable when comparing Blu-ray discs with standard DVD discs, but the employee said a Blu-ray disc is harder to get finger prints on or scratch.

Storage space for a Blu-ray disc is greater than a standard DVD disc with 50GB compared to 4.7GB, Sony spokesman Greg Belloni said, which is how Blu-ray can offer “the true cinematic experience.”

That experience may cost more than just the price of a Blu-ray player because, Belloni said, people without a high-definition television would not be able to spot the Blu-ray benefits as easily as those with the HDTVs.

“… Those consumers can really get by with a standard DVD player,” he said. “However, anyone with HDTV should consider a Blu-ray disc player so that they can get the most out of their high-definition experience.”

Some people gave their living rooms total HD upgrades, DeFord said, because they’ve also been selling a lot more surround sound systems.

“You don’t go to the movie theater to listen to the front speakers,” DeFord said. “You want the whole experience.”

Where’s the market headed?

While it would appear that Blu-ray players and discs are where the market’s headed, Rob Enderle, principle analyst of the Enderle Group based in San Jose, Calf., isn’t convinced.

Blu-ray players in stores now are not complete because they don’t have the network connectivity capability like the players expected to hit stores this summer. So if security schemes are changed, Enderle said there’s a chance that new discs won’t play on old players.

“DVD was clearly the only thing that was on the horizon when it came out,” Enderle said, which is why it was able to catch on. “… The difficulty Blu-ray has right now is with an incomplete product, the follow-up product is already starting to ramp in the market and we didn’t have that with DVD.”

Enderle said the only safe affordable Blu-ray system to buy now is the PS3 or if people want to hook up their computer and Blu-ray drive to TVs.

“Unless you really like chasing leading-edge technology, you probably want to hold off on a Blu-ray [player],” he said. “At the very least, you want to hold off until the network connecting decks show up at the end of summer.”

Downloads, the follow-up product, already are available through Apple TV, Microsoft Xbox and some cable or satellite providers.

For between $229 and $329, people can buy a 40GB or 160GB hard drive that can be plugged into the TV. Using a wireless Internet signal, viewers can buy movies, TV shows or music videos.

Movies in standard definition format are $3.99 for new releases or $2.99 for older titles. High definition titles are a dollar more. The movies are stored on the hard drive for 30 days before they expire and erase themselves.

OnDemand program that some cable providers have for customers is similar to this except people paid for the hard drive when they received their cable box.

With this on the horizon, Enderle said people’s movie collections are going to shrink.

“When the market goes to downloads, I think for most of the movies, you’ll see people just rent them,” he said, “and then occasionally, they may buy a movie and store it and keep it.”

Moving away from DVDs to Blu-rays or downloads isn’t going to happen overnight.

“It’s going to take a while, for downloads to really ramp, we’re talking about five years,” Enderle said. “ … I honestly think this last Christmas was the last real window that HD, whichever format, had to really ramp into volume … with the upscaling DVD players being good enough, you can hang on forever.”

Form : http://www.tribstar.com/

Sony-Ericsson’s leaked patent shows the closest thing to a PSP-Phone we’ve seen yet

Everyone wants to phight the iPhone, and now Sony is getting into the mix with help from it’s Sony-Ericsson partnership. Already pimping phones under the Walkman label, there’s been much speculation that a PSP-based phone was in the works, and now Sony-Ericsson has a patent for a video game-centric phone that has very PSP-looking buttons.

The touchscreen-based phone also has accelerometer support like the iPhone, as well as a vibrating, or “rumble”, feature.

This is the most concrete evidence yet that such a phone in in the works, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it had an Xmas 2008 launch.

Fresh ‘PSP phone’ patent surfaces [The Reg]

Original Article : http://www.crunchgear.com/

CeBit 08: More UMPCs from Gigabyte

We already reported about Gigabyte launching the M700 UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) -- at Cebit 08. Close on the heels of the M700 come two more devices in this category: the compact 4.8-inches MID (Mobile Internet Device) M528, and the full-function 7-inches UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) M704.

The Gigabyte M528 has a compact footprint and an elegant design. It features a 4.8-inches LCD monitor, built-in three mega pixels camera for photography, and 300K pixels camera for video conferencing. In addition, users can connect to the Internet, and send and receive emails as well as instant messages in time using the M528's wireless communication function. The MID has a QWERTY slide-out keyboard which is useful in fast text input. It also has a built-in GPS satellite positioning system. The M528 is built around Intel's Menlow platform with the CPU running at 800 MHz. It has 512MB of RAM and 8GB of Solid State storage. Along with its built-in Wi-Fi module, the M528 weighs around 340 grams. It sports a price tag of around $600 (approx Rs 24,000).

The other launch, the M704, is the bulkier of the two but still qualifies as a UMPC. It feels tad heavier than its 780 grams of weight and comes with a 7-inches touch-screen LCD monitor. The built-in 1.3 mega pixels camera, in conjunction with the snapshot hotkey, enhances photography, while the 802.11b/g Wi-Fi module allows users to surf the Internet, receive and send emails, have video conferences, and use GPS without limitation anywhere, making the product well suited for personal entertainment and business applications. At the heart of the M704 is a VIA ULV-C7 CPU running at 1.2 GHz with 256K L2 cache. The device is equipped with 768MB 533MHz DDR-2 memory. The 7-inches TFT LCD is capable of displaying resolutions up to 1024 x 600 pixels. Unlike the Gigabyte M528 or the Asus Eee PC for that matter, the Gigabyte M704 has a 60GB 1.8 hard drive for storage. It's powered by a two-cell battery that claims to last for four hours of standard usage. This device is expected to ship for around $800 (approx Rs 32,000).

Though both these portable PCs will have their own set of buyers, I don't think either of them would give the Asus Eee PC sleepless nights.

From : http://www.techtree.com