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Gizmodo: … but I don’t know why anybody would want to do that. This swiveling panel can rotate the TV around 180 degrees making it vanish completely. I’m trying to figure out a good application for this monstrosity of an entertainment center—maybe if you felt like knocking out a wall in your house, this could be an interesting replacement that would provide TV entertainment in two rooms. Regardless of how you use it, this swiveling entertainment center is sold at Costco, so it should be cheap, correct? Kind of. It will set you back $3,600 (2760 euro), which isn’t too shabby for a high-end entertainment center from the future.

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Crave: Radio stations are about to feel the same pain as the television stations scrambling to keep advertisers in the wake of commercial-skipping DVRs.

PopCatcher, a Stockholm-based company, has patented a technology that can automatically detect and record music from FM radio, AM radio, Internet radio or DAB radio (for our Scandinavian readers who were wondering).

The PopCatcher MusicDock MD-601 distinguishes between speech or commercials, and music. It records music played by its radio and stores each song as an MP3 file.

The MP3 player dock is a regular radio with built-in speakers. When you place the PopCatcher MP3 player in the dock, the docking station automatically records music played by the radio station you’re tuned to. It can distinguish between individual songs and imports each as a single MP3 file to the MP3 player. It does not record commercials or DJ chatter. Of course, that also means it can’t record talk radio. (…)

The MPS player will come with 512MB or 1GB of flash memory and charges while in the docking station.

While PopCatcher is taking orders for when the MusicDock MD-601 becomes available, it is also offering to license its technology to others. Good thing, since the MP3 player shown here is not exactly something I would crave.

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Electronista: HTC’s once mysterious Athena smartphone has been released on T-Mobile in the Netherlands. Now called the Ameo, the smartphone is substantially upgraded from early specifications and features a 5-inch, 640×480 touchscreen as well as an 8GB hard drive to complement its miniSD card slot.

Also new is a 3-megapixel camera and an unusually quick 624MHz XScale processor. Bluetooth 2.0, GPS mapping, and Wi-Fi are equal components.

Battery life is long in spite of these features, with 5 hours of talk time and 300 hours when in standby. Exact availability outside of Europe remains unknown, but the presence of quad-band GSM support with both HSDPA and UMTS Internet access points to an eventual North American release, likely with T-Mobile’s American division.

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Gizmodo: Sony greeted its PS3 fans with a shiny new update this morning. Version 1.50 fixes backward compatibility issues with PS1 and PS2 games. Specifically, it’ll allow them to run in progressive scan mode.

Other than that, it’s hard to tell what else has been fixed since there’s no update log.  (…)

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Newlaunches: Americans may enjoy the services of XM and Sirius Radio, but the satellite radio industry in Europe is quite at a nascent stage. Working on the similar premise of the dish antenna for TV, ESA and their nine partners have labored for three long years and are coming out with a satellite car radio that will change the face of the radio industry in Europe for good. The prototype of this radio will be demonstrated at the Noordwijk Space Expo on Thursday 25 January.

Saying goodbye to signal loss in tunnels, cracking voices and static noise, this multimedia car radio is just the beginning of the good times to come. Keeping the sleek looks of the car in mind, it will have no large dish antenna on the roof, but a specially designed mobile antenna, flattened so that it can be built almost invisibly into the bodywork. Instead of new satellites and a network of ground-based transmitters the ESA system uses only existing communication satellites.

Due to the advanced technology used (cache memory), received signals can be stored and can be played back later. So in case you need to make that restroom stop in the middle of your fav song you could pause the song, you can even select a part of the broadcast to listen to.

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EETimes: Sony on Tuesday denied claims that it was preventing the porn industry from using the Blu-ray high-definition format developed by the consumer electronics giant.Media reports have quoted adult-film directors and producers accusing Sony of pressuring others not to manufacture Blu-ray discs with adult content or share technology with the porn industry. The result, according to reports, has been a migration by adult filmmakers toward HD DVD, a competing format.

Sony dismissed the claims saying it has no control over the licensing of Blu-ray, and has no problem with the adult industry using the format. “There’s no prohibition against adult content,” Lisa Gephardt, a spokeswoman for Sony Corp. of America, said. “We don’t tell people how they can use the licenses they get from the Blu-ray Disc Association.”

(more…)

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T3: Sony may claim that Blu-Ray is as impenetrable as Baghdad’s Green Zone. But the same hardcore hackers who managed to crack HD-DVD last week, have now done the nasty to its bitter rival.

Gleeful geeks say they have managed to take down the DRM wall and get to grips with the AACS encryption, just as they did on Tosh’s HD format. However, they’re yet to breach the inner sanctum of BD+ copy protection.

It may only be a partial crack, but it seems these boys don’t mess about when it comes to sussing out Hi Def’s secrets. We won’t be surprised if we’re talking about a full crack in a matter of days.

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Crave: (…) new rumors about the blogosphere are indicating that the much-coveted Nintendo console may already be due for a bit of a facelift. Well, not really. But the Wiimote, of screen-smashing fame, might be getting some adjustments to deal with some of the most common user complaints.

According to a German gaming news site, the grip will be improved to make it a little easier to hold onto, and the Wiimote will somehow have a rechargeable battery. (…).

Nevertheless, it’s still a rumor (always be skeptical when new product announcements have to be run through a Babelfish translator before you can understand them), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Wiimote saw rechargeable battery features in the near future.

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Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov today said that India is the only country with which Russia wants to develop all aspects of the global satellite navigation system GLONASS.

“At present India is the only country with which we want to develop all aspects of GLONASS. This demonstrates the general nature of our relations and our willingness to develop cooperation with India in such sensitive areas,” he said in Bangalore on Tuesday when visiting a satellite production centre.

“The Ministry of Defence has now removed all limitations on the precision of receiving information from GLONASS,” he added.

Ivanov said that the management of Roskosmos would sign for the Russian side, although the GLONASS system was and will remain a duel-use system.

He added that Moscow is prepared to cooperate with India in developing GLONASS, saying that it already counts military-technical cooperation.

Source: Interfax News Agency

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AVZombie: Sky has confirmed that it will broadcast the 79th Annual Academy Awards in high definition in the UK.

Both the live ceremony and red-carpet coverage will get the HD treament. Sky One HD’s 90 minute preview coverage will start at 11pm on Sunday 25 February.

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MobilitySite: Famous surfing apparrel maker Quicksilver has recently announced a range of clothing items supporting Bluetooth and iPod.

The line-up includes:

• Quiksilver Double Daffy Snow Jacket featuring Plantronics stereo sound and voice technology with Bluetooth: The jacket is part of Quiksilver’s Limited Edition Outerwear Collection and is both iPod and cell phone ready.

• Quiksilver Pulse Helmet featuring Plantronics stereo sound and voice technology with Bluetooth: The lightweight helmet, constructed from injected ABS, has adjustable side vents and comes in a black camo print.

• Roxy Teen Angel Snow Jacket featuring Plantronics stereo sound and voice technology with Bluetooth: iPod and cell phone ready.

• Roxy Shiver Helmet featuring Plantronics stereo sound and voice technology with Bluetooth.

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TV Predictions.com: Manufacturers of flat-panel LCD TVs can expect their profits to fall in 2007 and beyond. That’s according to research firm DisplaySearch senior vice president Yoshio Tamura, as quoted by Reuters.

The newswire says Tamura told a seminar in Tokyo that LCD profits will be hurt by increased supplies and more competition from Plasma flat-screen sets. “We cannot expect large profits from large panels any more,” Tamura said, according to Reuters. “Profitability will be getting hammered by competition with plasma.”

Due partially to increased supplies, flat-screen prices have fallen dramatically over the last year. Some TV makers say they may concentrate on manufacturing larger-screen, higher-priced sets to keep profit margins high.

But Tamura says LCD makers’ decision to introduce sets in the 40-50 inch range has simply fueled more competition with Plasma, which has led to more price cutting. “If the plasma camp cuts prices, the LCD side lowers prices, too.

All in all, it is going to be a very tough business environment in 2007,” Tamura said. In related news, flat-screen maker LG Electronics said today that its fourth quarter profits fell 85 percent.

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