Gadgets Future

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted May 24th 2008 at 2:03PM
What this? Best Buy finally released the Insignia NS-BRDVD blu-ray player for an affordable $349.99. The design, like other in-house Insgnia-branded products, is questionable, but if you were looking into the PS3 as a player, this could be a $50 cheaper option if games aren’t your thing. The unit outputs at 1080P, decodes Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD, and decodes 2-channel Dolby TrueHD. Outputs include stereo audio, composite video, component video, optical Toslink, digital coax, and HDMI. No word on image quality just yet, but based on previous Insignia products, we’re not holding our breath.

[Thanks, Jordan]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Register Hardware reviews the LG KF600 and writes, “The camera is capable of capturing some finely detailed shots, with quite vibrant colour rendition. Its automatic metering system adjusts quickly to changing lighting conditions and exposure is generally good. In low light levels, the performance isn’t quite so good, and the flash option could be better – it is bright for short-range shots, but doesn’t illuminate with much finesse.”

Read more about the LG KF600.

The Washingtonpost reviews the Nokia 6555 and writes, “On the imaging front, the Nokia 6555’s 1.3-megapixel camera does a solid job reproducing colors but scored poorly in terms of resolution and noise. You probably won’t be framing any photos you take with the 6555…Overall, the Nokia 6555 offers users a solid feature set for an entry-level phone, but with a few drawbacks you might expect from any phone you’re getting for free with a contract. The lack of multimedia functionality is an annoyance, but realistically you probably aren’t going to find a great music or camera phone at this price.”

Read more about the Nokia 6555.

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted May 24th 2008 at 11:41AM
In the latest of what’s becoming a long history of tweaks to the Meizu M8 interface, Meizu CEO Jack Wong unleashed some new shots of the upcoming UI to his adoring fans. The new interface is designed by eico design — who have also worked with Google, Lenovo, and Philips — and looks to have a visually-satisfying sparkle animation for selected items (unless the battery above is just leaking). Another addition appears to be LED-styled status updates to applications, like number of missed calls and unread messages. Until we see this all in motion, though, we’ll quietly speculate and hope the pretty pictures are real.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: cellphones

So what happens when you combine a Japanese ISP Founder, the idea of an iPhone, and the idea of WiMAX together in a room? You get a fun-filled day of iPhone/WiMAX bashing! Sachio Semmoto, the founder of eAccess (a broadband provider as well as a wireless company) said that the iPhone is a “total failure” in the US compared to the number of phones sold by others (think RAZR). While he liked the functions, he doesn’t like it on AT&T (who doesn’t?).

“If I have a chance to talk to Steve, I’d like to tell him face to face: You made a wrong choice.”

In between shots at the iphone, Semmoto also mentioned that WiMAX will lose the 4G mobile battle versus LTE (no mention of UMB?) and CDMA (the technology Verizon and Sprint uses) will fail on the way to LTE.

So… How many iPhones have been sold in one year? Such a miserable failure. And CDMA will die because LTE is not CDMA-based, it’s roots are in GSM. Ahh… Thank you, Mr. Semmoto.

Read [NZ Herald]

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by Darren Murph, posted May 24th 2008 at 4:42AM
Go ‘head Oppo — get down with your bad self. This S11 portable media player may not be the most easily recognized on the streets, but it sure has a lot going for it. Aside from the sleek (dare we say sexy?) enclosure, the unit packs a 3-inch 400 x 240 resolution touch panel, video out port, integrated photo viewer / calender / stopwatch / calculator, a couple of games, file search capabilities and support for MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, AAC and APE audio files. On the video front, it’ll play nice with AVI, DivX, XviD, RM, RMVB and FLV formats. If the 4GB of internal memory just isn’t enough, there’s also a microSD slot for loading in additional media. Check out a video preview of the thing just after the break before dropping $163.99, though.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted May 24th 2008 at 3:29AM
Remember when the Wrightspeed X1 electric car beat both a Ferrari 360 Spyder and Porsche Carerra GT off the line? Well, ex-Cisco and DEC engineer Ian Wright is back with his SR-71 that he says will do 0-60 in a brain-numbing 2.5 seconds. The new electric speed dart should show up in about 18 months and could even get a street-legal version in 36 months. That’s a long time to wait, sure, but a faster-than-Bugatti EV at a fraction of the cost could just be worth it.

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Filed under: Transportation

by Darren Murph, posted May 23rd 2008 at 11:14PM
Engineering souls have been hacking up the Apple TV for a good while now, but those too scared of completely ruining their box have had to sit patiently on the sidelines waiting for someone else to do their dirty work. Enter aTV Flash, a USB flash drive which enables your Apple TV (Take 2 included) to do all sorts of fancy new tricks without any fuss. Those with the drive simply plug it in and watch as new file formats become supported, UPnP media streaming opens up and Safari-based web browsing becomes a reality (among other things). Granted, the convenience will cost you $59.95, but that’s the price you pay for making your life easier (and your Apple TV a little more useful).

[Via TUAW]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

by Nilay Patel, posted May 24th 2008 at 2:06AMWe hadn’t heard from struggling content-delivery service Akimbo in over a year, so it’s not really surprising that the latest news isn’t exactly cheerful: the company is shutting down, leaving only a “skeleton crew” behind to find a buyer for its remaining assets. Akimbo seemed like it was searching for a viable business model from the start (eventually leading the company to drop its hardware offerings entirely), and like other would-be set-top box vendors, it looks like the economics of content delivery were simply too skewed to wrestle into profitability. Any bets on who’s next?

[Via GigaOM]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment