Sony introduce first consumer Video-SLR
It’s not often we see brand new technology in the industry, especially in a category that’s existed for so long. Video cameras are nothing new, but a interchangeable lens system is just plain disruptive. Still cameras have offered the ability to switch out lenses for different situations for a long time, Sony’s EX-VG10 takes that same idea and introduces it to video cameras. This allows videographers to use the right for lens for the right situation, giving ultimate control.
The camera shoots in full 1920×1080 high definition video at up to 24Mbps, which will chew up your 32GB SDHC/SDXC in 4 hours flat. It seems like a waste, but if you want to snap some stills, you’ll get 14.2 megapixels to play with. There’s also an array of microphones, hopefully resulting in some usable audio, something often not common with consumer camcorders.
The Sony EX-VG10 goes on pre-sale in the US tomorrow for US$2000, which really puts it into the prosumer category.
More @ Engadget
DIY Philips Ambilight TV – Ikea LED Dioder kit
Whilst Philips has their Ambilight TV range, having a glowing lightshow of colour behind your screen comes as at a cost. A creative guy by the name of Marc Lane of IkeaHacker has created an alternative. Making use of an Ikea bookcase turned sideways and a IKEA LED Dioder kit, it makes for a unique cheaper option.
Naturally the Philips solution is a little more advanced with it’s colours being an extension of the image currently being displayed on the screen. Still, Marc’s looks great and is a good alternative.
Philips Ambilight TV
More @ IkeaHacker via LifeHacker
Intel want to send you to space, 2010 chip line-up are fast
In an effort to promote their new 2010 line-up of Core i5 and Core i7 chips, Intel are running a competition that could see you sent to space. Well technically not space, it’s as close to space that the public can get. Flying in a Russian MIG-31 Fighter Jet at Mach 2.5 up to a height of 82,000 feet above earth, it’s an amazing opportunity.
The correlation here is the speed of the aircraft, and the speed of the new chips, featuring the Intel Turbo technology. To enter the competition all you need to do is head over to Intel and answer the question – How will a trip to the edge of Space change your life? The contest closes on April 16th, a month from today, so start thinking.
The competition is eligible to residents of Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines.
For more info about the comp, check out: http://www.intel.com/apac/turboboost
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/IntelTurbo
Twitter: http://twitter.com/IntelTurbo
Watch and contribute to the conversation on twitter by using #IntelBlastOff
HP releases MediaSmart add-in for TiVo, step-by-step guide
Earlier today HP released an awesome new add-in for their MediaSmart Home Servers. The MediaSmart Expander for TiVo allows you to copy your favourite recordings to the MediaSmart so running out of storage should never be an issue again. Another feature is the ability to stream those shows from your PC back through your TiVo to your TV.
This means you’ll never need to fork out for that Western Digital 1TB Expander drive, your own storage that you’ve already invested in. The only downside is the transfer is a manual one. So you’ll need to open the Home Server Console Periodically and transfer the show you wish to keep, then delete them from the TiVo. While that may seem annoying, the upside is the storage amount is only limited to the size of your Home Server array, which as you know is easily upgradable.
This Add-in is supported on HP MediaSmart EX490/EX495 and HP DataVault X510 models, earlier models are not compatible. On the TiVo side you’ll need a Series II, Series III, TiVo Premier. Both Australian TiVo models will work. One more caveat is that both the TiVo and MediaSmart must be on the same network. In the standard home setup, this isn’t an issue.
If you in the US, you’ll see a new Add-in available in the Settings screen of the Home Server Console. If your outside of the US, then head over to http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/everyday-computing/mediasmartserver/us/en/tivo.html and download the Add-in manually.
Step 1 – Setup
Copy the HPTivoExpanderAddin.msi file into the Software/Add-ins folder on your Home Server.
Step 2 – Install the add-in
Open the Windows Home Server Console, click Settings in the top-right corner.
Step 3 – Activate
Select the MediaSmart Add-in and click install. Once finished installing the Home Server Console will need to restart.
The next time you launch it, you’ll notice the addition of the HP MediaSmart Expander for TiVO© item to the left-hand side menu.
Step 4 – Configure
There’s very minor configuration required before the devices can talk to one another. Simply click on the Configuration button at the top-right and enter your TiVo Media Access Key, available from your account page on http://tivo.com.au
Step 5 – Select
Once configured you’ll see the files stored on your TiVo. To transfer files to your MediaSmart, select each file (holding CTRL+click for multiple), when your ready to go, click the Transfer Selected Files button.
Once the Transfer is in progress, go make yourself a coffee, or 10.. this process is not fast. When complete the files (shows) will display in the third tab Files on Server where they can be deleted if you wish, or simply browse to the folder and delete them like normal files.
Step 6 – Location and Playback
After some investigation I discovered the files are actually transferred to \\MEDIASMART\Recorded TV\tivo. If you’d like to playback the files, you’ll need the TiVo Desktop software installed on your machine.
Step 7 – Watch on TV
Another option, and probably the more common, is for playback through the TiVo to your TV. To play the files (now located on your MediaSmart, scroll right to the bottom of your Now Playing list and you’ll find a new item called HP MediaSmart Server (MEDIASMART) where MEDIASMART is the name of your server.
That’s it, that’s all there is.. well except for an nice little easter egg.. those guys at HP seem to love them. Discovered by the guys over at mediasmartserver.net, if you double-right click on the TiVo DVRs Found section, you get a 4th tab Team Info.
In other news.. while hunting around HP site today I noticed, the HP EX490 MediaSmart Servers have dropped in price. I paid A$899 for mine only a few months back, they are now A$749.
More info @ HP.com
Adobe shows off Flash/AIR on the HP slate
The last time we seen the HP slate was during Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech at CES. Information has been so scarce that many were starting to call it vapourware. With no confirmed ship date, specs or price, it’s easy to understand why, especially with it’s greatest competitor – the Apple iPad only a month away from shipping.
Adobe shows off the HP slate running Flash in the browser, based on 10.1, it makes use of GPU acceleration to reduce CPU cycles. Also showcased in the video is the ability to run Adobe AIR apps in Windows 7 on the slate. These are out of browser apps that make use of the Windows 7 on-screen keyboard for input. Those familiar with the on-screen keyboard would know this is resizable so as to adjust to your hand size.
Update
There’s now an embeddable version on YouTube.
Watch the video @ Adobe
TiVo updated, TiVo Australia take note.. we want this.
Cnet have just spilled the beans about the latest TiVo update. Expectations were high TiVo promoted the event with the tag line ‘A DVR was just the beginning’. So what did TiVo deliver and does it live up to the hype ?
The new Series 4 TiVo will come in 2 varieties, TiVo Premiere with a 320GB HDD (US$300) and a TiVo XL containing a 1TB HDD (US$500). Sadly Americans will still be forced to pay monthly, annual or lifetime subscription fees, something we gladly escape in the Aus version.
The new TiVo remote is essentially the same, with the addition of a slide out qwerty keyboard. Personally I think Boxee’s keyboard on the back would have been a better solution. It does look like they’ve been able to pull it off without adding much extra bulk to the remote, but not doubt it’ll weight a little more. The up, down, left, right control scheme for TiVo is fine for basic functions, but when searching for content it becomes a pain.
There’s a new UI, this time in HD, something current model seriously needs. Whilst the existing TiVo models do support widescreen, the interface is only SD and after being around for 10 years, it was well overdue for a reboot. The new TiVo UI features integrated online video sources including Netflix and YouTube.
The ‘Premiere’ model of TiVo comes with cable support, which is equivalent to our Austar or Foxtel PayTV.
Another new feature is the ability to manage user profiles. Naturally the way a home works is that different people like different shows, until now they’ve all been bundled into one main list of recorded shows. Now they can be browsed by user.
Sadly existing TiVo owners (Series 3 and HD) will not receive the update, so if you want the new hotness, you’ll need the new box. To pull of the new faster UI, there’s upgraded internal hardware which will ship in the US next month.
The skinny
Basically it’s an interesting announcement, fairly predictable, no massive shocks here and certainly doesn’t live up to the hype of the event. Where’s the 8 tuners, or boxee integration, or xbox media extender support, or even just DLNA streaming from PCs, sadly none of the features that would have been truly impressive have arrived.
Update
I may have been a little hasty to condemn the announcement as not that interesting. After reading through the official press release there is indeed a number of interesting changes.
Premiere is built on multi-core architecture that greatly facilitates future development of third party provided applications.
We Listened: By popular demand Premiere includes an on-screen disk space meter that shows how much room is left to record, a built in 30 second scan, and a new video window that lets you watch your favorite show while navigating the TiVo menus.
A new relationship with FrameChannel brings the best of the web directly to the TV offering users access to nearly 1,000 content widgets of personal and commercial content, ranging from Tweets, photos and status updates to news, weather, sports scores and stock quotes.
Even More Content: A brand new relationship with Pandora means in the coming months, Premiere as well as TiVo Series3™ and HD DVR customers will be able to listen to their personalized Pandora radio stations..
Australia
TiVo in Australia is only licensed, by Hybrid Television Services, so a US announcement like this does not automatically correlate to an Australian release. As a TiVo owner, I was really looking fwd to getting an updated UI, new features all via a firmware update, sadly this won’t be the case.
More @ cnet and zatz not funny
Dell gets customer service, very very right
After posting a couple years back about a bad customer service story with Dell, I felt it was important to also write about a good experience I’ve recently had. Blogs are often criticised for simply being a platform to complain, I’d like to disprove that theory now.
Around a year and a half ago I purchased 2x 27” monitors. Recently I’d noticed one of them began flickering. This was more pronounced with a white, or light application background. Using different connections didn’t help, dropping back to a single input didn’t help, neither did grabbing the latest drivers from Nvidia.
Out of options I needed support. Dell support. Using the power of social networking I posted the following tweet.
To which I received the following response.
I sent off the service tag, my name and email address. A couple of hours later I received a call from Dell support. I ran him through the situation, a couple of minutes later, he said, “we’re going to replace it”. 3 days later I had my replacement monitor. I place the broken monitor back in the box, and send it back to Dell, all shipping paid for.
It’s been one of my most pleasant experiences with customer service I’ve ever had. Does this mean that they’ll get it right 100% of the time ? No of course not, what it does show, is that Dell are paying attention to what customers are saying. One of the best examples of a business using social media to help their customers. If you have a problem with a Dell product, consider using twitter.
