Gadgets Power

ABC will begin offering more of its shows on video-on-demand (VOD) services. That means viewers may have a backup plan if they forget to record their favorite show. Unfortunately, watching the show through the video-on-demand service won’t be entirely free.

Don’t get me wrong. You won’t have to pay anything out of pocket for the show, but you will be forced to watch the commercials associated with it. That’s because fast-forward will be disabled on these shows.

(Read the full post about ‘ABC to offer shows through video-on-demand service’…)

Posted Feb 27th 2008 4:19PM by Ryan BlockFiled under: LaptopsSo at Sony’s Open House we were having lunch with Mike Abary, Sony’s US SVP of Information Technology Products Division, who oversees Vaio computers (among numerous other things). Of course, the inevitable question came up about the Eee PC’s success thus far, and what that means to computer companies on the higher end of the spectrum, like Sony. Mike’s response was a little surprising, but certainly sensible enough: if consumer expectations begins to weigh too heavily toward the $300 end of PCs, he believes that kind of consumer adoption would have a profoundly negative impact on the industry, referring to its effect as “a race to the bottom.”We know there are a lot of Eee fans in the house, but the man makes sense. (Read the full post about ‘Sony exec sees Eee-like PCs as having potentially negative impact on industry’…)

Batman has Robin, Sherlock has Watson. Hell, even Mr. Burns has his ever-attentive Smithers. So it’s reasonable that globe-hopping travelphiles should have an equally dedicated, trustworthy, loyal accomplice, right? One of the best guides we’ve found (besides that Icelandic supermodel with an infallible sense of direction) is the new HP  Travel Companion 310. It’s a taco-size GPS unit adorned by an easy to read 4.3-inch, 480 x 800-resolution touchscreen and punctuated by elegantly simple controls. Maps are detailed and effortless to read, coming in either 2-D or 3-D flavors. The 3-D maps are especially useful when you’re lost — the realistic representations of buildings and elevated streets can help you easily gain your bearings after straying off course. (Read the full post about ‘Review: HP iPaq Travel Companion 310 Is a Globetrotter’s BFF’…)

Posted Feb 27th 2008 1:54PM by Darren MurphFiled under: DisplaysSadly, Epson’s latest projector will end up spending entirely too much time in the boardroom and not nearly enough time throwing up Halo 3 Portal matches in the lounge, but we suppose that’s the life of a business projector, after all. The recently launched EMP-1825 offers up an XGA (1,024 x 768) resolution, 3,500 ANSI lumens, a USB 2.0 port and a CompactFlash slot for good measure. Most notably, however, is this thing’s wireless skills, which enable it to beam out presentations without being tethered to a PC. Still, we’d like to see a resolution a little closer to 1080p before dropping Rs. (Read the full post about ‘Epson launches EMP-1825 business projector in India’…)

It has been a long time coming, but the DualShock 3 controller has finally got a release date for the US. Come April 15 you will be able to get your hands on the updated controller and start to experience the long lost rumble feature used so well in many PS2 games.

It was September last year when Sony announced the new controller was coming at the Tokyo Game Show and Japanese gamers got it in November. I’m not sure why there was such a long wait before the US launch, but hopefully it involved readying game updates to allow already released titles to take advantage of rumbling.

Sony are also hoping it will sell more games and controllers by releasing it at the same time as GT5 Prologue, which will of course have rumble features.

(Read the full post about ‘DualShock 3 in North America this April’…)

Posted Feb 27th 2008 12:51PM by Darren MurphFiled under: Displays, HDTV There’s displays made for digital signage, and then there’s Samsung’s SyncMaster 820DXn. Put simply, there’s no commercial screen we’d rather have sitting in our living room, and while we doubt many would go for it, the specs here are pretty impressive. Outside of the expansive 82-inch 1,920 x 1,080 resolution S-PVA panel, you’ll find 178-degree viewing angles, a 5,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, “ultra-high” brightness levels, eight-millisecond response time and the firm’s own DNIe PRO image enhancement technology. It also includes built-in fans for extended usage along with an integrated PC consisting of an 1.8GHz Athlon64 X2 3400+ CPU, 4GB of flash storage, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, an ATI graphics set and Windows XP to boot. (Read the full post about ‘Samsung’s 82-inch SyncMaster 820DXn sports a built-in computer’…)

Man, didn’t you just love the eighties? They used to have these places called “arcades”, where you could play all varieties of video games standing up that had a wide diversity of controllers ranging from track-balls, spinners, and the good old joystick with buttons. The Dream Authentics Tabletop Arcade Game recaptures the spirit of that unfortunately bygone era, without the whole standing up part. A player can now sit down at their desk and enjoy classic games such as Pac-Man, Tempest, Centipede, Gauntlet, as well as 150 other classic titles from the big video game corporations like Atari, Midway, and Namco. This Arcade flashback from the eighties can also act as a quarter-munching fad from the fifties: a jukebox. (Read the full post about ‘Dream Authentics Tabletop Arcade Game’…)

Fruit Bowl - Football Are you a footy fan well why not show that you are with this very nice football fruit bowl? Cleverly designed bowl looks exactly like a deflated football.Quality made ceramic bowl ideal for fruit, keys, loose change etc.Dimensions: diameter 210mm Technorati Tags: Kitchen gadgets Tags: toys, mobile phone, audio, AAC (Read the full post about ‘Fruit Bowl - Football’…)

Posted Feb 27th 2008 12:46AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentWhen CES 2007 came around, a good portion of the US stopped and thanked their lucky stars as MediaGate’s fairly well-spec’d lineup finally came stateside. Now, the same firm is introducing the MG-350HD’s (pictured) successor, the MG-450HD. Said entertainment server enables owners to wirelessly stream HD video, music, and other media to an HDTV or stereo from their PC, and it also fetches content from networked hard drives and locally attached USB drives. Unfortunately, this one caps out at 802.11g, but it does include HDMI, optical / coaxial digital audio outs and Ethernet to boot. (Read the full post about ‘MediaGate announces MG-450HD entertainment server’…)

Fresh off the format war win, Sony has announced two new Blu-ray players. The BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 players both offer compatibility with formats to include BD-R/RE, DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW and JPEG on DVD or CD recordable media. In addition to the wide variety of format support the players will also feature BonusView (Profile v1.1), BD-Live (Profile v2.0) and offer 1080p24/60 output via HDMI. Both players also have an Ethernet port and can handle up to 7.1 channels decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DD+ along with 7.1 channels bitstream audio output including DTS-MA. Above the BDP-S350, the BDP-S550 will include 1GB of persistent storage along with up to 7.1 channel decoding for DTS-HD MA and up to 7.1 channel analog output. (Read the full post about ‘Sony unveils BDP-S350, BDP-S550 Blu-ray players’…)