Posts for 'Portable Audio' Category

Microsoft has come up with a Media Player – Zune HD that would truly prove a competitor for Apple’s iPod Touch. As Microsoft is having a strong base of technical expertise, it can be guessed that the new HD player may have a good impact in the open houses.

This new MP offers the features like; a multidimensional OLED screen, and a HDMI TV output port. This player would be available in 16 and 32 GB options. All these options will have wireless option that can be helpful to use with a computer. It is guessed that Zune HD might be using Nvidia’s Tegra chipset that may assist 3D xbox games.

It adds Web browser, yet it is not clear that, browser would be used to capitalize, what sort of applications. However, it is clear that Zune HD would be powered by Windows Mobile 6.5.

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Any disappointment that the imminent closure of Sony's Go!Messenger service has just been well brought with it has been and truly eradicated. As rumoured, a PSP LittleBigPlanet game is, indeed, in development. Better still, SCEE isn't just bringing the (brilliant) LittleBigPlanet to its portable console, though.The MotorStorm franchise will also make a transition in the form of MotorStorm: Arctic Edge and, less interesting to me at least, Buzz will see a portable reworking.

Claims from SCEE that 2009 would be a good year for the PSP don't sound quite as far fetched now, do they? If you're not interested in seeing LittleBigPlanet and MotorStorm on the PSP, then maybe a purple lilac console will do it for you. I actually quite like it, thought I doubt I could suffer the humiliation of buying a Hannah.

Nokia N79 Active £350 SIM frer-The N79 has had an upgrade. It'll soon come with a 4GB Micro SD card, Polar heart rate belt, armband, headphones and the latest version of Nokia's workout application, Sports Tracker.

The N79's onboard GPS combined with Sports Tracker means that you can record speed, distance and route of your workouts, as well as your heart rate. All this while you listen to some motivating Bounce and Donk tunes to keep you going.

Mobile phones
I'm growing as loyal to the LG brand these days as I was to Sony's for much of the past 20 years. All of LG's fridges, air conditioners, and other appliances bear the company's cool signature curves and finishes, and smart features.

My wife, Lisa, was tickled to discover a light inside our new LG gas dryer that flicked on when she opened the door. It's a simple, low-tech Easter egg, but one that might help solve the lost-sock mysteries around our house.

This is what I call the LG touch: Each of the Korean powerhouse's products has at least one great feature, which demonstrates that a designer was thinking about you when he crafted the device.

The LG Decoy (available through Verizon Wireless) is no exception. The music phone comes with its own delightful add-on: a slot on the phone that holds its own detachable Bluetooth headset. Now your phone and headset can be in the same place - saving you from scrambling for two gadgets in your pocketbook. This also reduces the need for you to walk around like a tool, with that headset permanently planted in your ear.

The Decoy is a meaty, four-ounce slider with a mirrored, metallic finish and 2.2-inch display. The face has a joystick surrounded by backlit arrows and four backlit control buttons. The phone has a black keypad with backlit keys.

You can manage much of your Verizon Wireless V Cast media without sliding the Decoy open: The joystick (which is a might too touchy) will get you to your libraries, and the V Cast streams quickly enough. The Decoy also has a 2-megapixel camera and a memory card slot.

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Details of AOL's streaming radio application for the Apple 3G iPhone have surfaced after it was revealed that the application won an Apple design award for "Best Entertainment Application" at this year's WWDC. The free application will be available for the 3G iPhone next month, allowing users to stream 200 AOL online radio stations and 150 terrestrial radio stations over both Wi-Fi and 3G cellular connections.

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The Olympic games have historically been a big mover of home entertainment products, giving consumers that excuse to splash out on that new big screen TV, home theatre or recorder to enjoy the really soak up the two weeks of sporting highlights. Recognizing this Panasonic has announced that the DMR-BW500, the first stand alone Blu-Ray Disc Recorder to be launched outside Japan will be available just in time for the Games. The DMR-BW500i can record up to 72 hours of Full High Definition 1080p recording onto the built in 500GB Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or 6 hours 40 min on a 50GB double layer Blu-ray Disc. In addition to video, it can record 5.1-channel Dolby Digital surround sound broadcasts and Blu-ray movies are played in studio-master quality at a frame rate of 24 frames per second.

The DMR-BW500 offers a twin DVB-T High Definition (HD) tuner with 1 second quick start for recording and support for 7-day Electronic Program Guide. Panasonic's intelligent VIERA Link offers single-remote control of Panasonic AV devices via HDMI and streamlining operation with features such as Pause Live TV, Direct TV Record and Auto Preset Download. The unit also features HDMI V.1.3, Deep Colour, DVB-T adaptive noise reduction, silence technology, 1080p Up-Conversion with HDMI and 7.1-channel surround sound of BD movies. It also supports the 'Bonus View' (formerly Final Standard Profile) Blu-ray standard and bitstream output of Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, DTS-HD Master Audio and on-board decoding of Dolby Digital and DTS.

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If you're a Netflix subscriber you may have noticed that in the last year or so the company has rolled out a Watch Now option that lets you instantly watch some of the movies and TV shows in the Netflix library on your Windows PC with a broadband connection.

More recently, in upgrading its digital offerings, Netflix has taken things a step further by separating out the Instant Queue from your DVD Queue.

While the all-you-can-eat streaming video option is a nice perk for users (it's available to any subscriber on the $8.95 per month plan or better), the real dream for many people is that instead of watching movies on your PC's monitor, you cut out the computer completely and go right to your TV.

Well, with the Netflix Player by Roku ($100) that has become a reality.

Before we get into just what the box does, it's probably worth mentioning a little bit about Roku for those who may not have heard of the company.

After releasing a handful of well-regarded streaming audio products earlier in the decade, the SoundBridge M1001 and the SoundBridge Radio, Roku had gone quiet in the consumer space for the past couple of years.

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Apple, maker of the iPod media player, said yesterday that it would start selling movies through its iTunes online store the same day they are released on DVD.

New releases from studios, including Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., will cost $14.99, Apple said in a statement. Previously, customers had to wait several weeks after the DVDs debuted. The service will start with such movies as "American Gangster" and "Juno" this week.

Chief executive Steve Jobs is counting on movies to increase sales of iPods, Macintosh computers and Apple TV devices, which let users watch downloaded films on their widescreen televisions. In January, Jobs said customers had bought 7 million movies, which was below his expectations. Apple began selling movies and television shows on iTunes in October 2005.

"People want to watch a movie as soon as it comes out, and they don't want to have to wait," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch in New York. "What Apple is doing is knocking down one more barrier for why you wouldn't want to buy a movie from them."

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Ok so it seems Nokia are getting ready for their official Apple iPhone response, the name is called Nokia Tube.

The Nokia Tube will feature a touch interface which cannot wait to play around with, and then I will tell you if it is as good as the iPhone. This brand new handset is apparently set to be as close as possible to the iPhone device and was shown at a slideshow at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Redwood City, California.

The slideshow demonstrated the handsets UI plus a promotional shot featuring Shrek, vice president of Forum Nokia Tom Libretto has said that yes they do believe that they compete for the Apple iPhone’s market share even though they have not set a release date as of yet.

Apple have sold around 4 million phones since their launch but Tom Libretto said “We’ve done that [volume] since we’ve had dinner on Friday,” well let me say Libretto, yes you may have, but they were all low-end cell phones were they not?

Anyway we cannot wait to see this new handset, the world need the Nokia Tube and then and only then can we pair the two together.

Apple's new laptop, the MacBook Air, may not be the true ultraportable that many had hoped for, but it still easily breaks new ground for small laptops. Mimicking the 13-inch silhouette of the current MacBook line, it's only 0.76 inch thick at its thickest, and Apple calls it the "world's thinnest notebook." Some nitpickers say an obscure Mitsubishi laptop from 1997 was a hair thinner, but two of the smallest current ultraportable laptops, the 11-inch Sony VAIO TZ150 and the 12-inch Toshiba Portege R500, are both slightly thicker, and neither tapers to 0.16 inch as the Air does along its front edge.

As we've come to expect from Apple, the design and engineering that went into the MacBook Air is extraordinary, but it's certainly a much more specialized product than the standard 13-inch MacBook and won't be as universally useful as that popular system. The biggest compromises, which have been well-documented, come in its connectivity: The MacBook Air finds room for only one USB port and doesn't include a built-in optical drive, FireWire, Ethernet, or mobile broadband. And like with its other laptops, Apple refuses to outfit the Air with a media-card reader or an expansion card slot. Offsetting its sparse connectivity are genuinely useful new features including new trackpad gesture controls and the ability to wirelessly "borrow" another system's optical drive.

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