Digital Trends
Low-cost HDTV maker Vizio isn’t bashful about its product introductions, and is apparently now taking a shotgun approach to the high-definition television market, announcing total of 31 new models that will be available to consumers starting from right now and running through September, 2009. The models are distributed across three lines—XVT, M, and E series—and are designed to appeal to a range of consumers tastes—and all 31 units are Energy Star 3.0-compliant.
Last month Asus announced it would include the flash chip Splashtop on all its motherboards, allowing for a virtual instant-on of a few applications including IM, Firefox and Skype.
Now it’s going one better by including an instant-on version of Linux, made by Device VM. The Splashtop distro will appear alongside Windows Vista on the Asus M70T, M50V, M51Vr and F8Va/Vr notebooks later this summer, and will eventually expand to the entire notebook range.
By complementing Windows, Splashtop will give users a choice of OS.
Henry Yeh, general manager of Asus’ notebook business unit, said:
Netgear has announced the availability of its Digital Entertainer HD media receiver, intended to act as the living-room hub for digital entertainment—and give the forthcoming Apple TV a run for its money. The Digital Entertainer HD lets users use open standards to stream digital content to their televisions or home theater setups over their in-home network (via wired Ethernet or 802.11b/g Wi-Fi); the Digital Entertainer HD can pull in media from Windows and Macintosh computers, network-attached storage devices, and USB media. And it can also stream media from popular Internet media sources like YouTube, Flickr, and (ahem) BitTorrent.
After announcing last week that it would participate in Sony’s global battery replacement program for notebook batteries, Japan’s Fujitsu announced today that was recalling 287,000 Sony-made made batteries used in the company’s notebook computers. Combined with recalls from Dell, Apple, Toshiba, and Lenovo, the number of recalled Sony-made notebook batteries has climbed to over 7.5 million.
The batter recall is another blow to electronics giant Sony, which has suffered a series of technical and public relations blows this year, including repeated delays on its forthcoming Playstation 3 gaming console, a format war between Sony-backed Blu-Ray and HD DVD next-generation DVD disks, a legal and privacy furor over copy protection software clandestinely included in Sony BMG music CDs. Sony’s share price has declined more than 10 percent since the laptop battery problem emerged in August 2006.
Finland’s Nokia today took the wraps off three new XpressMusic mobile phone handsets, aiming to prove that consumers will opt for a device which combined phone capabilities with the features of a dedicated music player.
The Core 2 Duo train keeps on rolling: yesterday additional computer makers announced new notebook offerings based around Intel’s mobile edition of its Core 2 Duo processor, with Sony and Gateway all rolling out numerous models for the North American market. As with other company’s announcements, the systems tend to be comparatively straightforward CPU upgrades from existing Pentium M or Core Duo systems, rather than revolutionary leaps forward in either performance or features. But the industry is certainly promoting Core 2 Duo as the latest and greatest must-have technology…we’ll leave it to our Tender Readers to decide how true that might be.
There’s a new entry in the clique of social networking sites today with the debut of a beta version of MOG, a free site dedicated to the music-obsessed among us who are looking for a way to express their tastes in tunes, share what they’re listening to, find new music, and connect with similarly-dedicated music fans.
In the last few weeks, digital camera makers Sony, Konica Minolta, Nikon (Europe and Japan), Olympus (Japanese only), Canon, Fujifilm, and Ricoh have all issued service advisories covering several of their camera models, citing the cameras’ sudden failure to record images, or to snap distorted pictures or images with a strong purple cast. The failures effectively render the cameras useless. In classic “stealth recall” move, most companies are typically offering to repair the defective cameras free of charge regardless of warranty status, but are coy about admitting to the problem, presumably because the extent of the failures may show the company or their products in a bad light.
Optoma Technology, Inc. today announced the availability of its next-generation, high performance digital projector for home theater enthusiasts.
With an incredible, high contrast ratio of 4500:1, native 720p resolution and a bright 1000 lumens rating, the H79 delivers one of the industry’s finest HDTV images to date. The new projector features Texas Instruments’ advanced DarkChip3(tm) and DLP(tm) technology, which projects higher brightness and deeper black levels by “filling in” the area where the digital micro mirror connects to its hinge – producing smooth, film-like picture quality. Key H79 optical components are crafted by Optoma’s experienced engineers to achieve the highest display quality possible. In addition, the gap between the mirrors has been further reduced and the backing to the mirrors has become more light absorbent.
XM Satellite Radio has announced that Nissan North America, Inc., has chosen XM to supply satellite-delivered data and telematics services, such as in-vehicle messaging and XM NavTraffic, whichdelivers current traffic information to properly equipped Nissan and Infiniti vehicle navigation systems.
“Nissan’s choice to expand its relationship with XM in this important area of data services and telematics capabilities represents a major milestone for our company,” said Hugh Panero, CEO and President of XM Satellite Radio. “XM has dedicated significant resources to the development of XM NavTraffic and other automotive data capabilities over the last two years,” Panero said.
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