Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

This is it, soldiers. The day you’ve been anticipating has finally arrived. Okay, so maybe that’s a build up not deserved by the lowly Metal Gear Solid 4 Bluetooth headset, but seriously, we’ve been waiting ages for this thing to ship. Like, so long that the whole MGS4 aura has already come and gone. Those still firmly planted in Snake’s posse can choose to prove their fanhood by snagging this thing now for $39.98; if all goes well, it should be headed your way in a matter of business days. Over and out.

[Via LogicBuy]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays

Printable OLED panels are hardly the rare occurrence they once were, but Alps Electric seems to think it’s worked enough magic with its latest prototype to stand out from the pack, even if it may not wind up in actual product form anytime soon. The key bit with this one, it seems, is a so-called “getter” layer that’s used in addition to the usual electrodes and emission layer, which helps to seal the area around the cathode electrode and compensate for minute defects. According to the company, that effectively triples the life of the OLED panel, which is especially useful considering that the same technology is also increasingly being used for lighting systems in addition to displays.

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Who says there are too many players in the HDTV realm? With current mainstays partnering up like it’s going out of style, we’ve found two firms that see something no one else does. General Electric has just announced a joint venture with Taiwan-based Tatung in which the pair plans on making two million HDTVs annually when production gets going in 2009. The two hope to capture at least 5% to 10% of the global TV market in due time, and according to Peter Weedfald, president of North America and global chief marketing officer for the JV, the resulting product will be a “premium brand” that will be “very competitive with current leadership brands.” We’ll be interested to see what all becomes of this, and hopefully we’ll have some prototypes to gawk at come CES / IFA / CEDIA 2009.

[Image courtesy of VintageTVSets]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio, Portable Video

We’ve heard this about this dream so many times before, DRM that will make digital media as easy to use and as consumer friendly as a physcial medium like DVD. We’d normally be quick to disregard this as yet another DRM “ecosystem” for digital media, but the list of players backing the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (or DECE) has us taking notice. As impossible as this seems, if anyone could make it happen, it’d be a group composed of: Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, Fox, HP, Intel, Lions Gate, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, Philips, Sony, Toshiba, VeriSign, and Warner Bros — yes, we also find it hard to believe that all these companies are working together. We’ll have to wait until January at CES for the ins and outs of how this would actually work, but we do know it’ll be based around a “rights locker” which will amount to a website where digital purchases will be stored — we assume this is where VeriSign fits in. Oh, and Apple is noticeably absent from the list

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Original post by Ben Drawbaugh

Who couldn’t use a bit more memory? Samsung, the largest global producer of Flash memory, apparently does. The company announced today that it’s considering purchasing card-maker SanDisk.

“We are exploring all options, including a buyout and an alliance, but nothing has been decided at this time,” said Samsung in a statement.

According to Market Watch, Samsung currently pays up to $500 million to SanDisk yearly to cover the company’s Flash memory patents.

The news of the potential acquisition pushed SanDisk share up more than 25 percent this morning.

Original post by Brian Heater

Samsung this morning announced the released of the BD-P2500, the company’s fifth generation Blu-rayplayer, which boasts new features.

Timed for an October release, the BD-P2500 features out-of-the-box compatibility with new BD profile features like BD Live and Bonus View. The player also comes with a built-in 1GB flash drive, Ethernet connection, and a USB port.

The player offers full 1080p playback, upconverts standard DVDs, lets users view JPEGs., and features HDMI 1.3 output with xvYCC Deep Color support. Users can also play Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and dts as uncompressed PCM signals.

The player will be priced at $499.99 upon its release.

Original post by Brian Heater

We’ve been hearing about 8-megapixel camera phones for a while–but the Samsung innov8 raises the bar, with smile shot, blink shot and face recognition features. And users can personalize and edit their photos, videos and music with the included Movie Maker and Story Board applications. The innov8 sounds more like a camera with WiFi abilities than a phone with a camera.

The handset can also be a digital photo frame, letting you display your favorite images on the 2.8-inch LCD screen.

The camera phone can play DivX, WMV, Real Player and MPEG4 videos. Its external dual speakers and 3D surround sound supported by DNSe 2.0, make video clips and movies more realistic. The phone is also equipped with GPS technology, offering navigation and geo-tagging. And it comes with the Symbian OS V9.3, S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, which helps you easily download various ready-made applications for Symbian mobiles.

Samsung launched the first 5-megapixel camera-phone in 2004, 7-megapixel camera-phone in 2005, and the 10-megapixel SCH-B600 in the Korean market in 2006. The Samsung innov8 will be launched in Europe in August, and then other markets during September.

[Via PhotographyBlog]

Original post by Chris Gampat

You wouldn’t know it by walking outside, but it’s the holiday season here in Magazineland. With that in mind, Samsung held its annual holiday showcase yesterday in Manhattan. Located in what is essentially someone’s ridiculously expensive renovated three-floor Greenwich Village apartment space, the show hit just about every one of Samsung’s diverse electronics categories–from MP3 players to washing machines.

Check out some of our favorites, after the jump.

The SC-MX20 is Samsung’s newest entry into the “YouTube camcorder” space. The camera runs $280 and has an SD/SDHC card slot, a 2.7-inch swivel LCD, 34X optical zoom, and Advanced Image Stabilization. It’s also a snazzy-looking device, available in red, white, black, and blue next month.

Speaking of snazzy, the TL34HD is the company’s high-end point-and-shoot. It offers 14.7-megapixel shooting with a 3.6X optical zoom and a Schneider lens with a 28mm wide-angle focal length. The camera will be available in September for $329.95.

Samsung’s S2 Pebble offers a lot of style for a $40 Flash-based MP3 player. Of course, for that price there’s not screen and only 1GB of storage, but beggars can’t be choosers, right?

The new Touch of Color (ToC) line are combination HDTV/PC monitors that feature built-in digital ATSC/QAM tuners, offer front and rear HMI ports, and 5-ms video response times. The T240HD and T260HD offer 1080p resolutions.

Original post by Brian Heater

Filed under: Wireless, Networking

If you’ve tried every antenna and extender on the market today with subpar results, HD Communications is apt to become your new best friend. The outfit has just revealed its HD26200, a “complete outdoor wireless network bridge in the 802.11b/g unlicensed 2.4GHz band that sells for only $318.” Said device bridges wireless internet between two locales up to 5 miles apart without requiring a single RF cable, being that both Ubiquiti network radios are powered over Ethernet. If you’re looking for the catch, the bridge does require a direct line of sight between the two locations, but the firm is reportedly looking to expand its non-line of sight family by the summer’s end.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Sammy already gave us a heads-up that its Touch of Color LCD HDTVs would be widely available in May, and although it has issued no separate release to inform Earthlings that these things are available for purchase, here’s the notice you’ve been dying to receive. As of right now, both the 650- and 750-series sets are in stock and available to procure from a wide variety of resellers, and if you’re curious as to whether or not either family is worth your time, you can get a hint from our review of the LN52A650 right here.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Not content with just ordering a touchscreen-packin’ Cloudbook from Japan, Azazel decided to take matters into his own wonder-working hands and hack up his vanilla unit to include the oh-so-coveted touch support. Based on his reports, disassembling the rig and stuffing the new panel in was a lesson in simplicity (save for one quick round with a soldering iron), but actual usability proved to be somewhat of a letdown. It was noted that using the small screen with just a fingertip was challenging, and while relying on a pen did make things marginally easier, we’d think long and hard about your needs / wishes before taking the plunge.

[Thanks, David]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Do you hate all those annoying shovelware programs PC manufacturers lad on your machine before you buy it? Of course you do. And Sony, helpfully, is offering a “Fresh Start” option to remove all that pesky crapware. How nice! Yes, for $50, Sony will remove all the crapware programs… Wait, it says here that Sony will remove all of the programs it installed in the first place. Excuse me?!

So not only is Shovelsoft paying Sony to put those programs on in the first place, you get to pay Sony to remove them. So far, the program is being trialed on the Sony TZ2000 notebook.

Just another example of Sony’s backwards customer service? At this point, yeah. Why couldn’t they just eat the $50 and remove the software as a value-added service? Or offer it as a “bonus” for customers who bought another software package? In any case, way to turn a positive into a negative, Sony.

Original post by Mark Hachman

UPDATE: As of Friday afternoon (3/21), Sony has decided to offer “Fresh Start” for free. “Starting March 22, Sony will offer Fresh Start free of charge,” a Sony spokesman said. “We want VAIO users to have the best experience possible with our PCs, and we believe Fresh Start will help ensure that happens right out-of-the-box.” Power to the people!

Original post follows:

Do you hate all those annoying shovelware programs PC manufacturers lad on your machine before you buy it? Of course you do. And Sony, helpfully, is offering a “Fresh Start” option to remove all that pesky crapware. How nice! Yes, for $50, Sony will remove all the crapware programs… Wait, it says here that Sony will remove all of the programs it installed in the first place. Excuse me?!

So not only is Shovelsoft paying Sony to put those programs on in the first place, you get to pay Sony to remove them. So far, the program is being trialed on the Sony TZ2000 notebook.

Just another example of Sony’s backwards customer service? At this point, yeah. Why couldn’t they just eat the $50 and remove the software as a value-added service? Or offer it as a “bonus” for customers who bought another software package? In any case, way to turn a positive into a negative, Sony.

Original post by Mark Hachman

We all saw this one coming, right? In the battle of the next-generation high-definition format, Toshiba’s HD DVD’s primary selling point was always its relative affordability. Now that HD DVD is out of the running, that whole free-market thing isn’t doing much to drive down the price of Blu-ray players. The inevitable march toward disk ubiquity seems to mean that Sony can charge whatever it wants.

As a result, Blu-ray drives are now at the most expensive they’ve been all year, according to TG Daily. Where competition had driven Blu-ray player prices down to near $300, the site is now reporting $400 as the average price for a playe. Prices are up across the board since February, when Sony was looking to deliver the death blow to Toshiba’s format (already weakened by Warner’s pre-CES pullout).

Matters are further complicated by the fact that Sony plans to release disks with advanced issues toward year’s end. Good news, except that since there are no players on the market with Internet capabilities save for the PS3, users with older units will not be able to take advantage of the features fully –or get firmware upgrades for their devices.

It’s almost enough to make you miss HD DVD.

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Original post by Brian Heater

As you grind your teeth over the hundreds of dollars you invested in that new HD DVD player and library of crisp, clear new HD DVD movies, here’s a report that may ease your pain a little: According to business daily Nikkei, Toshiba lost some 100 billion yen ($986 million) on HD DVD after its defeat at the hands of Sony’s Blu-ray.

“We did not announce this, and therefore we cannot comment,” a Toshiba spokeswoman told Reuters.

Really bad news got slightly worse when the report caused the company’s stock to dip 2.3 percent.

Original post by Brian Heater