Sunday, October 5: Elevate Film Fest at the Nokia Theatre

Nope, the festivals ain’t over. The “socially conscious” Elevate Film Fest
doesn’t wait for moldy film reels to appear in their submission
box—they demand that new films be created specifically for their annual
outside-the-box gathering of creative minds. Chosen filmmakers are
granted just seven days to shoot and finish their short-format music
videos, narrative and documentary shorts, which are screened for free
on Sunday in front of 7,000 film buffs. Aah, deadlines. Where would we
be without them?

Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, 777 Chick Hearn Ct., Downtown; 2 p.m.-8 p.m.; free tickets day of the show, $35 guaranteed premium seating

Source : http://losangeles.metromix.com/

Sony launches 24-hour TV channel in SA

Sony Entertainment Television Asia has launched its premium movie and special-events channel in South Africa.

The new channel, MAX, which is available on DStv’s Indian bouquet, offers a blend of Bollywood blockbusters, classics and glitzy events.

The offering is the latest by the pay channel aimed at the Indian market.

MAX, which has been well received in India, the US, Europe, the Middle East and the UK, is the second channel after Sony Entertainment Television to be launched in South Africa.

Rajan Singh, executive president for international business, said: “After a very successful test transmission phase on digital satellite, we are proud to offer the South Asian community of Africa a channel that has been at the forefront of TV in the subcontinent.

“We believe that after establishing itself as the market leader in its genre in India and other international territories, the channel is set to take South Africa and the rest of Africa by storm.”

It will offer local audiences “top-class movies and events”.

The 24-hour channel broke a record this year by attracting the highest viewership in Indian TV history.

“With an unrivalled edge in its on-screen look, packaging and technical standards, MAX offers viewers a completely new viewing experience, one where viewers can almost feel part of the movie or event they are watching,” said Singh.

Some of the movies included in the MAX line-up are Chak De India, Welcome, Partner, Heyy Babyy and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.

From : http://www.thetimes.co.za/

Sony, TV

Sony Vaio VGC-LV1S desktop computer

However, Sony's new range is good-looking enough to make a splash in a stylish
reception or boardroom.

Like Apple's iMac, it's an all-in-one solution so the desk footprint is
reduced. The hardware is built into the back of the screen which, at 24
inches, is high-end enough to qualify as Full High Definition (HD). And
since there's a TV tuner built in too, with a TV aerial, you can watch the
news as it breaks. Or that international football match thoughtlessly timed
to coincide with office hours. If you have an HD set-top box such as
Freesat, you can watch HD TV thanks to an HDMI input – something hard to
find on computers. The icing on the HD cake is a built-in Blu-ray drive.

So it looks good, but you're here to work. Does it cut the mustard
business-wise? Well, that Blu-ray drive is writable (also still rare), so
you can store up to 50GB of data on each disc. So it's an ideal way of
archiving data which can be stored elsewhere, safely and conveniently – a
burglar is less interested in DVD-sized discs. The hard drive is pretty big,
too, at 500GB. There's a decent 3GHz Intel Core Duo processor and plenty of
operating memory (4GB) so even the power-gluttonous Windows Vista can move
at speed.

If your work involves photo- or video-editing, the hardware is up to this and
bundled software makes it easy to burn video to disc.

None of this would mean a thing if it cost too much, but under £1,200 before
VAT is a reasonably keen price – you're not paying through the nose. There's
a smaller-screen (20-inch) LN1M model which has Blu-Ray playback but not
recording for £850 plus VAT. Not to mention a 25.5-inch model in black for
£1,700 plus VAT.

But you don't want to be ostentatious, even in the boardroom, now do you?

From : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Sony Pictures To Fully Embrace 4K Technology

Sony Pictures Entertainment will use 4K digital technology in the
making of most of its filmed productions, it was announced by Sony
Electronics. Sony Pictures has already released the summer blockbuster
“Hancock” in 4K, with the motion picture grossing more than $600
million at the worldwide box office to date.  Movies released in 4K can
play in theaters with either 4K or 2K projectors.  Among the next
motion pictures to be digitally imaged in 4K by Sony Pictures, and
available for 4K distribution, are expected to be “2012,” “Salt,” and
“The Green Hornet,” with more titles to be announced.

“With the industry moving rapidly to embrace the improvement in
quality that digital cinema can offer, we believe that 4K resolution
gives audiences the best seat in the house,” said Gary Martin,
president of Production Administration and Studio Operations for Sony
Pictures Entertainment.  “That’s why we will be making more of our
filmed productions at full 4K resolution, scanning at 4K, using a 4K
workflow process, and releasing a 4K DCP to theaters.  The crisp and
vibrant images provided by 4K are the only way to ensure that audiences
both today and in the future will really be able to see the full range
of what we can capture on film.”

“This commitment from Sony Pictures continues the momentum that is
building behind 4K,” said Gary Johns, vice president, Digital Cinema
Systems Division at Sony Electronics. “Exhibitors are realizing that 4K
is a reality now, for enhancing their customers’ experiences, and
studio support is a critical element to take advantage of the superior
resolution of Sony’s 4K projection system. The growing number of
4K-equipped theaters will now have even more 4K content potentially
available to offer their customers.”

From : http://www.sonyinsider.com/

AMD targets Nvidia with dual-GPU graphics card

Advanced Micro Devices has thrown down the
gauntlet to graphics rival Nvidia, unveiling a graphics card that runs
two graphics chips.

AMD Tuesday unveiled the ATI Radeon HD 4870
X2, which uses two smaller chips - the 4870 graphics processing units
(GPUs) -- rather than one big chip. The dual GPU technology, said AMD
spokesman Matt Skinner, provides users with 30 to 50 percent more
performance and lower energy requirements than Nvidia's GTX280 graphics
card.

The performance boost comes from having two
chips on board along with the improved their chip-to-chip
communications technology in the card, Skinner added.

"We wanted to develop a graphics card for
enthusiasts," he said. "We developed a chip targeted at performance.
And then we took two of those chips and put them on one card. People
have tried to build bigger chips but the problem has been heat and
cost. It's difficult for them to put two on one board because of space
and power limitations."

The new graphics card is a big win for AMD,
which has taken a lot of heat in the industry and on Wall Street for
its 1996 acquisition of ATI Technologies. The purchase caused a big
financial hit to AMD, which staggered through most of 2007. While AMD
has shipped a slew of new products this year, the haze from last year
lingers.

Dan Olds, an with the Gabriel Consulting
Group, said coming out with a fast 2-GPU card is a very positive step
for AMD, and could help show that the ATI acquisition was a smart move
after all.

"It's good to see AMD/ATI back in the high
performance game," said Olds. "The new card looks like it will be able
to deliver the goods to high-end gamers, a lucrative and desirable
market. Moreover, AMD's single card -- but dual GPU -- 4870 X2 can, if
early reviews are on target, out perform dual-card configurations from
Nvidia."

"The payoff is that this puts [AMD] in an
enviable position of having both the highest performance video card and
the less expensive solution -- an experience they haven't enjoyed for a
while," he said.

AMD's news comes just a week after rival Intel teased out
a few details for its upcoming Larrabee graphics chip, which will power
its first stand-alone graphics card. Larrabee marks a major strategic
shift for Intel, which has traditionally relied on graphics technology
from companies like Nvidia and ATI.

The good news for AMD and Nvidia, though, is
that Intel isn't planning to release Larrabee for another year to 18
months. That gives Intel's rivals time to put beef up their own
offerings and get out ahead in this looming graphics race.

From : http://www.techworld.com.au/

AMD brings Shanghai release date forward

 Computers & Peripherals | 04 Oct 2008 :

AMD has said it is bringing forward the deployment of its Shanghai server processors to the end of this year.

The new processors had been due for release in the first quarter of next year, but the company has said that progress has been faster than expected and they will now ship in volume in the last quarter of this year.

The company is still recovering from problems with its previous server processor, Barcelona, after a flaw was found in the chip's cache memory. The flaw caused delays of up to six months and lost AMD market share against rival Intel.

"With Shanghai we had to turn out a product early that had stability and health so that partners got engaged early," said Patrick Patia, AMD's general manager of servers and workstations.

"We had experience from Barcelona that wasn't ideal. To win hearts and minds we had to do something special with the new chip."

The first processor, a 75 watt general unit, will ship by the end of the year, he said. In the first quarter of next year a 55 watt version for cloud computing functions and blade servers will be released, as well as a 105 watt version for ‘pure performance servers", a sector Patia described as "niche".

The new processors will be around 35% more powerful than the Barcelona chips and will consume around 35% less power, in part due to the shift from 65 to 45 nanometre technology. The company is also planning 32 and 22 nanometre processors in the future.

To repair relations the company will be setting up full systems for partner testing so that the investment needed to test the new chips is minimised for customers. It is also getting the new chips to OEM partners early so that they can have systems ready as soon as possible.

After the Barcelona problems, the company brought in engineer Raghuram Tupuri to analyse the entire process and identify where problems were occurring.

The company claims the results have been excellent and the first Shanghai processors being built in AMD's Fab 36 in Dresden have shown lower than expected fault rates.

The company will also be releasing a new chipset for the Shanghai chips in the second half of 2009, only the second time it has ever done so.

The new platform, dubbed Fiorano, will be socket compatible with the Barcelona chips and will include virtualised I/O and AMD's Hypertransport 3 technology for faster speeds and better virtualisation support.

"We've been leading virtualisation benchmarks for some time," said Patia. " It's in our DNA that when we do silicon design we think about virtualisation. We've heard loud and clear and it's an important market to focus on."

Looking further ahead, the company is planning a six-core processor dubbed Istanbul in the second half of next year, which will also be compatible with the Fiorano platform.

A second six-core processor, Sao Paulo, and a 12-core processor, Magny-Cours, will be released in 2010.

"We will have products for the two, four and eight socket space, with the same socket, same platform and same frequency," said Patia. "Our competitor still has different features and different products for each system."

Source : http://www.techcentral.ie/

Nintendo Conference 2008 Fall

Thursday saw Nintendo
president address the media in Japan for Nintendo's Conference 2008
fall, announcing alot of new games and importantly a new DS model, the
DSi.

Satori Iwata took to the stage amoungst flashing lights infront of
an eagally awaiting audience, he was about to reveal what Nintendo had
in store for the next 6 months. There was quite alot of information to
get through, so we're going to give you the brief overview here with
some more in depth news stories for each of the major points.

Introducing DSi
Brand
new model for DS, the third in the family. The device will play normal
DS games, it will be smaller, lighter and have slightly bigger screens.
The DSi will have added twin camera functionality, SD Card slot, better
WiFi connection however the GBA slot has been removed. The DSi will
launch Nov 1st in Japan available in White or Black and will cost
18,900yen (~£100).

DSi will have new internal memory, similar
"channels" system to Wii which allows for a new DSWare shop. Certain
tools to be made available for free on launch such as the DS Browser,
Moving Notes and two tools for the DSi Camera (photo manipulation
software) and DSi Sound (audio manipulation software).

Nintendo Points
Wii Points to be renamed "Nintendo Points" as they will now work on both Nintendo DSi and Wii.

Nintendo Zone
Nintendo
are working with a number of companies in Japan to setup Nintendo Zone
WiFi hotspots, no setup required just walk into the store and you get a
connection. Unlikely to be done here in Europe, so we can pretty much
forget about it.

Wii Storage Problem
Nintendo
admit there's a problem, but have only given a half-assed response,
they will be issuing an system update sometime in the Spring of 2009
which will allow you to download directly to SD card (when not enough
internal memory) so you won't need to reshuffle things around, however
you will still need to move the desired file to the internal memory in
order to play it (they promise a one step method to do this). Sigh.

Wii Internet Conversion Rate
Nintendo
recognise that a number of Wii owners don't really understand how to
connect their machine to the internet (n00bs) but Nintendo are offering
alot of help in different ways, even selling their own access point
hardware for DS/Wii. They are also starting a campaign that for anyone
who helps a friend get connected online they will receive 500 Nintendo
Points for free.

Wii Speak Channel
Nintendo
announce that the Wii Speak hardware microphone included with Animal
Crossing will get its own channel, allowing you to speak to your other
Wii friends and even send voicemail messages over the Internet.

Wii Sports Resort
Delayed
until Spring 2009 in Japan, no doubt Summer 2009 for the west. Boo
hiss, but lets hope its worth it. No real new details announced,
WiiMotion Plus still included.

Play On Wii
Nintendo
set to release a number of re-developed-for-wii Gamecube titles,
starting with Donkey Kong Jungle Beat followed by Pikmin. These are
games that Nintendo claim still have a market value because frankly
alot of Wii owners never had a Gamecube and therefore still might be
interested in some of the best Gamecube games re-developed with Wii
specific control systems. Something which I actually agree with
Nintendo on, top. Budget prices though please.

Nintendo also announced some hot new titles, but more about those in other posts.

Source: nintendo.co.jp. and nintendolife.com

Nintendo Announce 5 New Wii Games

Nintendo's Conference did have a few nice announcements, not all for the DS. Sin & Punishment returns... finally.

The following five games were all announced for the first time at
last weeks Nintendo Conference, being a Japanese shin-dig details are
still quite thin on the ground, but here's what we know:

Sin & Punishment 2 (Nintendo) 2009
The game fans have been crying for, the massive action shooter returns and it looks fabulous.

Continues : http://www.nintendolife.com/

Kingston enters SSD market with Intel's help

After taking its time to branch into another new market, Kingston
has finally entered the competitive solid state drive (SSD) market. 
Kingston announced it is teaming up with Intel to sell Intel-made SSDs
to the enterprise market, with eventual plans to enter the consumer
market.

Intel currently has one SSD for notebook computers and the other SSD
product for use in servers.  They have 240MB per second read speeds and
have a write speed of 170MB per second.  The consumer SSD has a 1.8-in.
form factor while the SSD for servers uses a 2.5-in. form factor.

Kingston is interested in focusing on enterprise customers, who typically purchase memory modules when upgrading their PCs.

The company will issue a press release and go on a minor marketing spree once its first product is ready for launch.

Analysts and consumers alike expect SSD technology to increase in
popularity due to its construction with no moving parts, lower heat
consumption, and ability to be operated in harsher environments than
normal HDDs. 

The popularity of SSDs has increased over the past year, but will
not be able to progress in the consumer notebook market until SSDs
decrease in price.  Once the price per megabyte falls further, expect
to see more SSDs offered in pre-built desktops and notebooks.

Even with a foray into SSDs, Kingston expects to remain dedicated to
the flash storage and media market, where the company makes a
significant portion of its yearly revenue.  One of its main
competitors, SanDisk, has been the target of acquisition by Samsung, with unconfirmed rumors that Intel and Toshiba also are interested in purchasing the company.

Source : http://www.cdfreaks.com/

Nokia 5800 coming to India next month

Nokia 5800 coming to India next month

Nokia is likely to bring their Apple iPhone 3G rival to the Indian market sometime next month.

The company has just launched their Nokia 5800 touchscreen phone which has features comparable to the iPhone.

This phone could be priced competitively at around Rs. 20,000 here in India.

Nokia India managing director D Shivakumar spoke about this new
model: “What iPhone did was to bring the touch element to a multi-media
converged device. Since we are already the leader in converged devices
in India, Nokia 5800 will be a revolutionary launch from our stable.”

The phone comes equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss
lens (iPhone has a 2 mp camera). It also has a virtual QWERTY keyboard
in addition to 8GB memory.

Source : http://news.techwhack.com/

MSI Wind U100 coming to "major retailer," Wind 2 coming this quarter

Slowly but surely, MSI is following in the laughable footsteps of ASUS. At first, the Wind was simply the Wind. Now, we've a smattering of variants
to keep up with, and according to a recent interview with director of
US sales Andy Tung, that trend isn't about to stop. Starting next week,
the Wind U100 will be available at an undisclosed "large national
retailer," with the 3-cell / WinXP version going for $399.
Additionally, Tung gave us all a reason to hold off on making that very
purchase by revealing that the business-minded Wind U120 (or Wind 2, as
he called it) will be landing on US soil in late November or early
December. Said machine will boast "a whole new look," new HDD / SSD
options and inbuilt 3.5G WWAN connectivity for under $600. Also of
note, MSI's internal research has found that Linux-infused
netbooks get returned four times as often as units with Windows XP; we
can't say we're shocked that people don't feel like learning a new OS,
but we're deeply, deeply saddened that reading comprehension levels
(particularly on specification labels) in this nation are so obviously
low.

Source : http://www.engadget.com/

Asus Notebooks - N10E-A1, N10J-A1, N10J-A2 - Available on US

The ASUS N10 was announced in September with a release set for the Korean market, but the good news is that NewEgg has added the notebook to their catalog, and it can already be purchased on their website.

The specifications are already known, but the different prices taking in consideration the configurations are something new. With that in mind, check out the three N10 combinations:

N10E-A1 – cheapest model with a $600 price tag. Sports a 160GB hard-drive, WiFi, 1GB of RAM memory and Windows XP Home as the operative system.

N10J-A1 – more ram (2GB), a real graphics drive unit which is the GeForce 9300M with 256MB, a 6-cell battery, and an updated OS – Vista Home Premium. Priced at $700.

N10J-A2 – most expensive model that costs $800. Similar to the A1 but has more storage capacity (320GB) and a different operative system – Windows Vista Business.

PS – all the laptops have a 10.2-inch screen, built-in 1.3MP camera, and an Atom N270 processor running at 1.6GHz.

Source : http://www.mobilewhack.com/

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