Entertainment gadget

Apr 11th 2007 3:43PM by Evan BlassFiled under: Home EntertainmentEven though its food tastes like crap, you have to give poultry kingpin KFC credit for thinking outside the, um, bucket when it comes to TV spots, using innovative commercials to lure unsuspecting folks into purchasing its slop. You probably remember the company's last high-profile ad which forced viewers to watch in slo-mo in order to get the password for a free sandwich, and now it's utilizing that supposedly "kids-only," high-pitched ringtone in an attempt to drum up interest in the new Boneless Variety Bucket.

Aug 6th 2007 2:49PM by Ross RubinFiled under: Cellphones, Features, LaptopsEach week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:A few weeks ago a two-part Switched On column (see: here and here) discussed Apple's approach to the iPhone keyboard. I agreed with Apple's reasoning that, for a phone, or at least this first iPhone, the gains that could be made by going with a soft keyboard outweighed the cons.

Jan 18th 2007 3:45PM by Ross RubinFiled under: Home Entertainment, NetworkingEach week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:When Apple first released details about what is now called Apple TV, I wrote that it would create a DVR dilemma for the Cupertino company, one that it decided by bypassing DVR functionality (at least for now). The result will be a product that avoids many setup foibles and complexities of digital video recorders while allowing use of the increasingly versatile streamlined Apple Remote.

Jan 8th 2007 1:11PM by Darren MurphFiled under: CES, HDTV, Home EntertainmentJust after Verbatim announces that it's shipping 30GB dual-layer HD DVD-Rs our way, here comes some more news to slightly deflate that bubble. At an HD DVD presentation held at CES, at interesting PowerPoint slide caught our eye, as it (very briefly) described plans to "expand HD DVD disc capacity from 15GB to 17GB per layer, and moreover, to add a third layer as well, eventually resulting in a 51GB HD DVD disc.

Jul 23rd 2007 2:32PM by Ryan BlockFiled under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Portable Video, StorageWe got some very reliable information from an inside source on TiVo's newest DVR -- and guess what, it's called the TiVo HD (good luck trying to trademark that one, TiVo). Granted, we've heard most of this already, but our sources confirmed the TiVo HD will launch with a 160GB drive (or, as TiVo likes to put it, 160 hours SD / 20 hours HD), two CableCARD tuners, and possibly also an ATSC tuner.

Aug 24th 2007 6:34AM by Thomas RickerFiled under: Displays, HDTV, Home EntertainmentThat boring piece of kit can be from none other than Sanyo. Too bad, 'cause this pig can hunt.

Jul 12th 2007 5:51PM by Darren MurphFiled under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentNearly 11 months ago to the day, Europe witnessed its very first HD DVD release, and while the battle over format supremacy has been heated and rarely slanted to one corner here in the US, apparently things are vastly different across the pond. According to the (biased?) information spat out by the European HD DVD Promotional Group, "HD DVD players have outsold Blu-ray players by a three-to-one margin in Europe's main markets so far this year," and moreover, it claimed to hold a staggering "74-percent" of the market share in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland for standalone players.

Jul 25th 2007 12:39PM by Erik HansonFiled under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentSamsung has released more details about the company's third-generation Blu-ray player lineup, including a home theater-in-a-box system, and the Duo HD dual-format HD DVD / Blu-ray player. We learned about the two Blu-ray players earlier this month, and we can add to that info support on both players for 24 or 60fps playback at 1080p.

Sep 5th 2007 8:54AM by Darren MurphFiled under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentHere's some tantalizing news for those still refusing to choose sides in the perpetual format war. Turns out, LG seems to be readying its second HD DVD / Blu-ray standalone player for a fall release, and unsurprisingly, it's likely to be dubbed the BH200.

Feb 5th 2007 1:47PM by Darren MurphFiled under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentAfter the world's first HD DVD / Blu-ray hybrid player has been talked about forever, showcased at CES, rumored around a bit more, received a price tag, hit a potential production snag, shown up in stores anyway, withstood a review, and smiled real pretty for the camera, what else is there to do? Ah, yes, we must make things official. Nearly three weeks after LG's BH100 went on sale in a variety of big box retailers, the player is just now becoming an item that's "officially on sale," and should be taking over the DVD player section of your nearest Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA locations.

Aug 16th 2007 3:36PM by Darren MurphFiled under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentAmong many other things, Samsung has unveiled its F8 series of oh-so-sexy LCDs at IFA in Berlin. Focusing on the LE46F86BD in particular, this display touts 100MHz Motion Plus technology to sharpen up those images, 1080p support, a baffling 25,000:1 contrast ratio, and a superCLEAR panel coating to boot.

Jan 9th 2007 3:59PM by Thomas RickerFiled under: Home Entertainment, Portable VideoIt's official, Viacom's Paramount Pictures will indeed offer its movies for download over Apple's iTunes service. Some 250 titles in fact, including Tomb Raider, Italian Job, Wrath of Khan, Chinatown, Zoolander, School of Rock, and Sum of all Fears.

.. mentioned, the PSP comes in piano black, but it also comes in Ice Silver. We plan to offer it in an entertainment pack, including a 1 gig card and Daxter. We're also offering the Family Guy Peter Griffin "Frickin' ..

Jun 15th 2007 11:51AM by Darren MurphFiled under: Home EntertainmentUniversal Remote's company name leaves little unsaid about what its core competencies truly are, and its latest professional-series remote recently got a bit of hands-on time with the crowd at Electronic House. The MX-810 Pro Wizard was purportedly designed to work with setups ranging from a single room to an entire home, and sports a color LCD, 44 hard buttons, RF / infrared compatibility, rechargeable Li-ion, and hot keys for powering up select groups of components.

Aug 31st 2007 10:43PM by Joshua TopolskyFiled under: Features, Home EntertainmentIt's not like it's too big of a deal, but we happened by this new Blu-ray player from Sony while we were on our mass-wanderings amongst the gadgetry at IFA, and we thought we'd share a few images. Really nothing to write home about, though it does have a snazzy sliding front panel (the one that appears mirrored) -- but we couldn't say what that panel's function actually is.

Aug 30th 2007 9:20AM by Joshua TopolskyFiled under: Features, HDTV, Home EntertainmentSharp has just wrapped a rather dry press conference at IFA, where it announced very little, but did rattle off a series of fairly benign and boring numbers (which we will spare you from). There were a few moments of excitement during the hour-long presentation, though mostly due to the thunderous bass of the company's sound and light show

Jan 7th 2007 10:00PM by Conrad Quilty-HarperFiled under: CES, Home EntertainmentDigeo, the company that makes Moxi DVR software, announced back in September that they were planning to enter the retail market by selling a High Definition DVR directly to consumers, rather than take the path of least resistance and continue to make deals with cable networks. According to Zatz Not Funny! Digeo plans to show two prototype models at CES, both with integrated CD/DVD players, along with a PC streaming feature and that whole recording video thing that DVRs tend to do.

Jan 14th 2007 6:00AM by Darren MurphFiled under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentJust when every patient, fence-sitting individual finally rejoiced that a single unit was being introduced to solve the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray dilemma, we had a hunch things wouldn't be perfectly peachy.

Apr 8th 2007 6:47PM by Conrad Quilty-HarperFiled under: Gaming, Home EntertainmentThe Apple TV has received two new abilities in its second week of availability thanks to a couple of new hacks: one, a fully functional and integrated RSS reader, and two, video game emulation for NES, SNES, N64, and Sega Genesis game consoles. The RSS reader comes courtesy of the bloggers over at twenty08, who've managed to put together a plugin that adds an option to read RSS1

May 18th 2007 9:16PM by Nilay PatelFiled under: Desktops, Home EntertainmentIt's no secret that the Apple TV is just a stripped-down Intel Mac running a lightly-tweaked version of OS X, so simply getting an app to run on the system isn't really a big deal -- we've seen full installs of OS X running on the device at this point. On the other hand, if you're just using the Apple TV as a media extender, that processor is just sitting there wasting spare cycles when you're not using the device, so this little hack to run Apple's Xgrid distributed-computing client on an Apple TV seems pretty slick.