Digital Trends
Although the device has been expected for some time, today South Korean electronics giant Samsung officially announced its Samsung R1 media player, a followup to the Q2 it introduced earlier this year. The R1 offers a slightly bigger touchscreen, at 2.6 inches, and also roll in support for DivX video and a “Beat DJ” feature enables users to add their own voices and sound effects to songs—just the thing to entertain (or really annoy!) your friends when you hook it up to a stereo system.
Storage and peripheral maker LaCie continues to push into the digital media space and finding new ways to differentiate its hard drive and storage offerings from the competition. One example of that is the LaCie LaCinema series, which aim to function as media vaults rather than merely conventional storage: users plop their digital video onto the drive, then connect the drives directly to a television or other video output device for playback—no computer or convoluted media management required. LaCie’s new LaCinema Rugged HD adds to the appeal by offering high-definition output: now users can hook up the tiny portable hard drive to any HDTV with an HDMI input and watch high-def content.
We suspect Samsung’s announcement today might be a little overshadowed by pending news from Cupertino, but the company has officially taken the wraps off its 1900 Omnia smartphone, a Windows Mobile 6.1-device boasting a 3.2-inch display covering almost its entire front surface, and up to 16 GB of RAM for carting around music, video, documents, and other media.
Cowon has officially launched it’s much-anticipated A3 portable media player in the United States, hoping to carve away some market share from a certain Cupertino company by offering a large-screened portable device simple enough to appeal to novice users, and powerful enough to engage hardcore digital media fans.
“The A3 has improved upon the popular A2 with a new look and upgraded features that maximize video performance and digital media storage,” said Cowon America’s senior product manager Francis Choi, in a statement. “The A3’s bright, widescreen color LCD is perfect for enjoying movies on the go—and its audiophile-quality digital audio player works with all popular audio formats and high-definition lossy and lossless codecs.”
Toshiba updated its Gigabeat line of MP3 players on Tuesday with the introduction of the Gigabeat T400, a new flash-based model. It features 4GB storage, built-in H2C audio enhancement technology and support for WMA lossless audio files.
The T400 retains Toshiba’s signature PlusPad control button, set in the face of a black magnesium alloy case that comes trimmed in a choice of blue, pink or orange. It also sports a 2.4-inch color LCD display for navigating through music collections, displaying photos and playing videos. An internal battery should power the T400 for 16 hours of audio playback, or 5 hours of video.
Finland’s Nokia has begun shipping its top-flight N95 Internet- and multimedia-savvy smartphone, marking the company’s latest attempt to integrate mobile phone functionality with a media player, video camera, high-resolution still photography, mapping and location services, and mobile Internet capability. And if that sounds interesting, you’d better live in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, because there’s no word on when—if ever—the N95 will make it to the North American market.
It might not be Apple’s new iPhone, but Nokia wants people to know its been in the mobile Internet game for a long while now, and it actually has products available now, as opposed to maybe coming down the line in six months. Nokia’s new N800 Internet tablet, being shown off this week at the CES show in Las Vegas, is an update to its earlier N770 mobile surfing device. The idea behind the Internet Tablet is to let users keep up with their news, email, instant messaging, and Web services while also serving as a personal entertainment device with music and video. And although the N800 does support VoIP calling, the device is not, itself, a phone. Instead, it connects to the Internet using Wi-Fi or via a separate Bluetooth-capable phone that can talk to mobile data services.
H20 Audio announced today that it’s shipping its H20 Audio for iPod nano, a waterproof housing for the Apple’s petite music player which is waterproof at depths up to 10 feet (3 meters).
“The iPod nano’s compact size and great sound are making it a fastgrowing favorite for adventure sport and outdoor use,” said KristianRauhala, H20 Audio’s CEO. “Everyone from surfers, wakeboarders, waterskiers, and swimmers to joggers and snowboarders can now strap on an H2OAudio for iPod nano using an armband or swim belt and take their soundtrackinto their favorite activity regardless of environmental conditions.”
ATP Electronics, a maker of flash digital media solutions, announced today a new CompactFlash card which they say is the fastest CF card out there today. The ATP ProMax CF cards will be available in starting in January with storage capacity sizes of 256MB, 512MB, 1GB and 2GB, with a 4GB following later in the quarter.
ATP said their ProMax CF cards, which are water and shock resistant, are rated at 30MB/sec (150x). Targeted towards high end photographic needs, these cards are designed to work with high mega-pixel digital SLR cameras and video camcorders such as Nikon Digital SLR cameras D2X, D2H, D200, D100 and D70, as well as Canon EOS series SLR cameras and others from JVC, camcorders or Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D cameras.
Based on Philips’ Nexperia PNX1500 connected media processor and Mediabolic’s middleware, the solution allows users to access music, photos and videos, and enhances their experience by bringing networked applications to their television. The Philips reference design can be used either as a standalone next-generation digital media adapter (DMA) or as an integrated TV module.
Philips’ Nexperia PNX1500 supports decoding of all leading audio, image and video formats, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, H.264 and Windows Media Video. It supports standard definition (SD) to HD up-conversion with advanced de-interlacing, and integrates an LCD controller and advanced graphics engine. Its full-resolution MPEG encoding and integrated IDE and PCI controllers allow the reference design to be easily extended for both digital video recorder (DVR) capability and wireless connectivity.
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