18
Jun
2009
EngadgetHD: The UK is getting its own taste of Sharp provided BD-Live Blu-ray playing tech with the BD-HP22H, complete with DTS-HD MA, Dolby TrueHD and 1080p24 support.
Still, to get buyers to come up with the £199.99 (€233) pricetag, its touting a 0.7W/standby 20W/playing energy rating.
Buyers should be able to decide if that’s worth a few quid later on this month.
18
Jun
2009
Macworld: Memory cards based on a new specification will boost storage of consumer electronics to as much as 2TB, the SD Association said Thursday.
Secure Digital memory cards based on the new SDXC (extended capacity) specification could be out as early as next year with a capacity of 64GB, with 2TB available at some future point, said Kevin Schader, director of communications at the SDA.
The SDXC specification was announced in January, but the SDA couldn’t then provide a time frame for the release of products.
The specification was released to SDA member companies in April, Schader said. Companies including Panasonic have announced plans to develop memory cards based on the new specification.
The SD Association has about 1,100 member companies, including Toshiba and SanDisk, involved in the design, manufacture and sale of products using SD technology.
SD cards can be slotted into consumer electronics devices to store images, video or other data.
The new specification will replace SD slots and media based on the older SDHC specification commonly used in devices.
18
Jun
2009
Engadget: We knew that LG’s 15-inch OLED TV was entering into production this summer, now we’ve got a ship date: December.
This according to an interview with Won Kim, LG’s VP of OLED sales and marketing. While 15-inches is small, it easily trumps the world’s first production OLED TV, Sony’s $2,500 (€1,795) 11-inch XEL-1, and is a reasonable size for the bedroom (if you must) or kitchen counter.
No word on specs but we expect the production set to offer the same million:1 contrast, 1,366 x 768 pixel resolution, and 30,000-hour shelf life as the prototype unveiled in January.
The TV will launch first in Korea for an undisclosed price that is bound to be punishingly expensive.
18
Jun
2009
Electronista: An updated version of the Blu-ray standard will allow for limited copying, the head of the group behind the format’s copy protection has acknowledged.
Michael Ayers, chairman of the AACS Licensing Authority, confirms that almost all discs released after the first quarter of 2010 should allow one full-resolution copy, known as a Managed Copy.
Videos will be writable to Blu-ray or DVD discs, or a Windows Media DRM-compatible file; alternately, a file may be included on-disc.
New players will be needed to support the feature however, and some distributors may choose to charge for copies, or simply disable the option if they are small and/or missing the full rights to material.
Apple has also declined to provide support for files in its own format, making it difficult or impossible to sync videos with the likes of iPods, iPhones and Apple TVs. The company has generally resisted supporting Blu-ray on Macs, favoring downloads from its own iTunes Store.
18
Jun
2009
Electronista: The iPhone 3G’s price drop to $99 (approx. €71) is a large enough move that it could overhaul the entire cellphone industry, according to research by Nielsen.
Analyst Roger Entner believes the cut “completely changes” the worth of every phone already on offer and won’t just hurt smartphones, where the comparisons are more evident, but any limited “feature” phone that nears the price point.
Any cellphone over $49 (€35) is “kneecapped” and will look like either it costs too much to make or that the carrier is asking too high a price, Entner says.
The researcher expects Apple’s simple change to force changes in pricing. To more closely equal the 8GB iPhone’s pricing, device makers are likely to further cut their profit margins; carriers could alternately bear some of the cost by more heavily subsidizing phones.
A chance exists that carriers may recoup the costs of this by increasing the monthly fees, though Entner warns that customers may balk at having to pay more each month. Reductions in monthly rates are deemed unlikely to help, however.
Even an AT&T move would likely be seen as “scorched earth” policy as it would encourage other carriers to cut prices and give customers little reason to switch networks but still hurt revenues. Critics already anticipate that the company most likely to be affected by the cut is Palm, whose Pre while well received costs roughly twice as much and so far claims a faster processor and multitasking as its main advantages.
18
Jun
2009
Wired: The final text of the UK government’s Digital Britain Report has been released. The report is, according to its authors, the government’s “strategic vision for ensuring that the UK is at the leading edge of the global digital economy.”
PaidContent has done a cracking summary of the 275 page report, highlighting three main issues:
The Guardian also has exhaustive coverage of the detailed report, and leads with a piece by Charles Arthur highlighting the report’s idea that OFCOM should be given powers to ensure that internet service providers reduce illegal file-sharing on their networks by 70%.
Wired.co.uk’s media correspondent Peter Kirwan will cover the report in Wired’s media blog, The Great Transition, tommorow.
In the mean time you can read the full text of report at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s Web site here.
18
Jun
2009
BBC: The networking giant Cisco has declared video the next killer application. That claim is backed by research that shows that by 2013, internet traffic will reach 667 exabytes and 90% of that will be made up of video.
The traffic, equivalent of 10 billion DVDs worth of information, would cross the internet monthly said Cisco.
“If this prediction holds true, it would take more than a half a million years to watch all the online video,” said Larry Greenemeier of ScientificAmerican.com.
Cisco’s study helps to explain the company’s efforts to brand itself as a lead provider of what it calls “consumer experiences”. While the bread and butter of its $40bn in annual revenue come from the sale of routers and switches to big companies and ISPs, Cisco is keen to lay claim to new markets such as consumer electronics.
Its recent acquistion of Pure Digital, maker of the popular Flip video camera, has been seen as Cisco’s most aggressive move into this area.
“We’re just getting started,” said Ken Wirt, Cisco’s vice president of consumer marketing. “Our aspiration for the consumer business is $10bn,” he said. “We have over $30bn in the bank. In the last 20 years we have made over 130 acquisitions and are looking to buy where it makes sense.”
Other consumer-focused purchases included home networking firm Linksys. set-top box maker Kiss Technologies and TV equipment firm Scientific Atlanta.
18
Jun
2009
TomTom: Directly from Springfield, America’s most popular Dad makes his way to TomTom devices. With the original Homer at your side, even the shortest drive will transform into a journey to remember. You’ll see, driving with Homer is as easy as 1,2 … doh!
11
Jun
2009
TWICE: The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is hoping for a turnaround in CE industry sales, but it still sees challenges ahead.
CEA is projecting 1 percent growth in the third quarter and 1.5 percent growth in the fourth quarter for CE sales, and said its industry advisors predict that for the entire year sales will be down by 0.5 percent.
However, they expect 2.9 percent growth in 2010. In a survey of its CE Advisory Panel in April they estimated sales will bottom during this quarter (almost 30 percent), with about 20 percent saying the third quarter. In its Mid-Year CE Market Update, presented at the CEA Line Show here June 10, CEA reviewed the flat-panel TV business.
The report confirmed what individual manufacturers, distributors and retailers have been saying recently, namely that everyone is keeping lean inventories, unit shipments are up, but maintaining revenues compared to the previous year are hard to come by.
11
Jun
2009
Pioneer: Looking for the most complete navigation and multimedia centre there is? The 2-DIN NavGate AVIC-F10BT will be available across Europe from August 2009.
Leading Pioneer’s award-winning NavGate range, advanced features include:
11
Jun
2009
Electronista: The KEF Concept Blade is a set of enormous one-off speakers engineered to demonstrate the British hi-fi specialist’s technical know-how. Developed over a three-year span, these man-size boomboxes are a work of art in both aesthetics and performance.
Clad top to bottom in woven carbon fibre, these gorgeous concept speakers are capable of supporting the full audio spectrum out of the box. To achieve this feat, they employ four side-firing woofers to boost bass extensively and the company’s UniQ driver for more natural-sounding vocals.
You can’t buy these — they’re just for show — but you can read more in the company’s brochure here (PDF).
11
Jun
2009
Electronista: NAVIGON today signaled its intent to compete against TomTom’s iPhone app with software of its own.
A version of MobileNavigator will use iPhone OS 3.0′s support of turn-by-turn GPS to provide the same driving directions as many of its dedicated GPS units, including its Reality View, lane and speed assists, and its notification of road signs.
Owners can play music from their device’s existing library, plot routes based on contacts’ addresses and auto-resume navigation after taking a call. The mapping firm doesn’t say whether it will make an accessory to support MobileNavigator, as TomTom is for its own app, but does say it will have both free and paid versions.
The free Lite version doesn’t have active navigation and only lets users search the map as well as find points of interest; paying unlocks the full feature set. NAVIGON anticipates its software arriving in the App Store in June but won’t reveal the paid version’s price until it’s available.