Gadgets Base

by Darren Murph, posted Oct 4th 2008 at 12:02PM
Western Digital didn’t have too many comrades on the green bandwagon back in July of last year, but now it’s just one amongst legions. Nevertheless, it’s keeping its eco-friendly membership badge up to date with the second-generation Caviar Green Drive. Said HDD features the firm’s own GreenPower technology to “significantly reduce power consumption” compared to those traditional energy-sucking alternatives. The freshened platform is based on WD’s 333 GB/platter technology with 32MB cache, with sizes ranging from 500GB to 1TB. According to the company, this one consumes up to 20-percent less power and offers a 10-percent uptick in performance over the previous Green Drive, and best of all, the 1TB edition (WD10EADS) can be ordered up right now for $219 (MSRP).

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Filed under: Storage

The much-hyped mandatory transition from analog to digital TV in the United States has begun in Wilmington, NC. 

For those who don’t know, by law, all TV stations that broadcast over the air using analog signals must begin broadcasting exclusively in the new digital format by February 17.  Most U.S. TV stations already offer digital signals, but the majority of non-cable customers are still getting their TV through an old-fashioned analog signal.

The new digital format certainly has its advantages.  Its much better picture and sound quality are the most obvious.  Viewers won’t have to worry about static anymore.  They will, however, have to worry about actually getting the signal to their favorite local stations, The Wall Street Journal reports.

One of the most surprising lessons from the early digital-television transition that took place . . . in Wilmington, N.C., is that some viewers may permanently lose access to certain broadcast channels.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday that TV stations whose analog signals stretch far beyond their digital broadcast areas may be on the hook to build more antennas to reach those viewers.

The analog signal for Wilmington’s NBC affiliate, WECT-TV Channel 6, one of the stations in the experiment, broadcasts several counties away from its actual digital market.  When WECT stopped broadcasting in an analog format, as all TV stations must do Feb. 17, several customers outside the official market suddenly lost the channel.

While most of these viewers will still be able to access other NBC affiliates closer to their homes, this certainly raises the question as to whether U.S. TV stations are ready for the transition as far as strength of signal is concerned.  Mr. Martin expects about 15% of U.S. TV markets to “shrink in a significant way” after the transition.  With digital broadcasts, viewers either get an excellent picture or they get nothing.  There is no in-between.

Via [The Wall Street Journal]

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by Joseph L. Flatley, posted Oct 4th 2008 at 12:58AM
We’ve been hearing about vehicle-to-grid (V2G) for quite a while, and now a team at the University of Michigan is conducting an extensive study on the technology as part of a national sustainable energy solution. While current electric plants are good at generating power, they often fall short when it comes to storage — which can be a problem when there’s a power surge or when demand increases. V2G will let hybrid-electric owners sell the power their car generates to the electrical power grid whenever the car is not in use. The research team envisions a time when millions of hybrid vehicle owners will come together to create one large battery, allowing us all to play a small part in building our nation’s energy independence. And sure, this all sounds good in theory. But wouldn’t that mean relying on the neighbors to provide a key piece of the nation’s infrastructure? Have you met the neighbors? Doesn’t that seem a little… iffy?

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Filed under: Transportation

by Chris Ziegler, posted Oct 3rd 2008 at 7:59PMSo the good news is that T-Mobile has decided to keep right on taking pre-orders for the G1 through October 21, just one day before the handset’s official launch. The bad news, though, is that it doesn’t mean you’ll be getting your Android on come October 22. Turns out that the initial allotment of G1s set aside for pre-orders is now sold out completely, and any names taken between now and launch will be allotted phones being shipped “at a later date.” It’s not clear if a “later date” means a week, a month, or a decade after the 22nd, but for the sake of everyone involved, we hope its the former.

Update: T-Mobile’s site says that pre-orders taken from here on out will be delivered “as early as November 10,” so it looks like you early birds are going to have a nice little period of exclusivity. Thanks, everyone!

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Filed under: cellphones, Handhelds

by Donald Melanson, posted Oct 3rd 2008 at 3:43PMDetails on this one are about as light as can be at the moment, but The Wall Street Journal has it that HP is aiming to expand its iPAQ smartphone line into the consumer market with a new model that it’ll market to both average consumers and corporate users alike. According to “people briefed on the plan,” the phone will have both a touchscreen and a keypad and, naturally, it’ll run Windows Mobile 6.1 — oh, and it’ll be able to “send and receive emails, and access the Internet.” While there’s no indication of a price just yet, word is the device will be available in Europe first within the next two months, with a worldwide release to follow sometime thereafter.

[Via Gearlog]

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Filed under: cellphones

by Darren Murph, posted Oct 3rd 2008 at 2:41PMAs fantastical as NFC and contactless applications are, they’re still relatively unknown in the grand scheme of things here on this side of the drink. Thankfully, AIRTAG is stepping up in hopes of giving us Earthlings (and by that, we mean North Americans) a few more options. The conceitedly-named AIRTAG KIT is hailed as an “NFC development kit for end-users, professionals and developers” that will enable them to “program tags to NFC standards, to communicate with all NFC mobile phones and to develop secured applications compliant with the industry standards.” It’s still hard to say how many devs will shell out €249 ($344) for the privilege of expanding the protocol, but at least it’s out there for those who get curious.

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Filed under: Misc. gadgets, Wireless

by Darren Murph, posted Oct 3rd 2008 at 10:55PMLaptop Mag would evidently like to make two things quite clear: if you pick up MSI’s Wind U90, you better love SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and be totally cool with the sub-2 hour battery life. For those of you still with us, you can probably guess that the 10-inch Wind didn’t do so hot during its review, with those two rubs really overshadowing the solid design, great keyboard and delicious price tag ($350). For whatever reason, MSI figured it’d be peachy to toss a 3-cell battery in there and let mobile users just deal with the 1 hour, 39 minute lifespan; obviously, that’s an issue serious road warriors can’t ignore. If you’re willing to pony up for an extra battery and install your own OS (if SUSE isn’t your cup of tea), the Wind U90 might not make for a bad companion, but as-is, you better do some serious soul searching before pulling the trigger.

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Filed under: Laptops

by Donald Melanson, posted Oct 3rd 2008 at 1:37PM
Well, it looks like Toshiba isn’t just keeping its Cell-based SpursEngine chip confined to its laptops and super-resolution DVD players, as Leadtek has now also taken the wraps off a PCI-E card that’ll let you add some of that “faster than real-time” HD video transcoding to your desktop PC. Dubbed the WinFast PxVC1100, the card promises to encode and decode H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video with ease (and entirely in hardware), and it includes 128MB of 1.6GHz XDR memory to aid in the process. Just don’t expect it to come cheap, as the card’s apparenlty set to demand ¥30,000 (or $286) when it hits Japan later this month.

[Via Custom PC]

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Filed under: Desktops

by Donald Melanson, posted Oct 3rd 2008 at 1:37PM
Well, it looks like Toshiba isn’t just keeping its Cell-based SpursEngine chip confined to its laptops and super-resolution DVD players, as Leadtek has now also taken the wraps off a PCI-E card that’ll let you add some of that “faster than real-time” HD video transcoding to your desktop PC. Dubbed the WinFast PxVC1100, the card promises to encode and decode H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video with ease (and entirely in hardware), and it includes 128MB of 1.6GHz XDR memory to aid in the process. Just don’t expect it to come cheap, as the card’s apparenlty set to demand ¥30,000 (or $286) when it hits Japan later this month.

[Via Custom PC]

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Filed under: Desktops

It isn’t the first time Hitachi has sent shockwaves in the video industry, but it’s certainly the first time anyone has bothered to cut the cord between camera and receiver. Demonstrating a prototype at CEDIA this week, Hitachi executives showcased the means by which the camera, dubbed the WOOO, can stream HD video to a TV display completely wirelessly. The Wooo was able to AVCHD video and stread it across a standard IEEE802.11g module using SSDIO. The TV was able to receive it thanks to a wireless receiver plugged into it and acting as an access point. A few things have to be worked out, however.

Chief of which, is that the camera has to use two separate servers to stream live and recorded video. Live Video uses the Hitachi IPTV server feature to deliver the signals to the HDTV, but has to then switch to Hitachi’s DLNA server for streaming prerecorded video. No big deal, as long as it works. But twice as much of anything tends to mean confusion or, breakage. And that translates to being expensive. The concept is proven as sound, which means it’s only a matter of time before we finally get the ability to simply hit play and place the camera on top of the TV without dealing with crawling behind the TV to connect the cords.

Hat Tip – SLASH GEAR

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