This is not the Apple TV you were looking for
Posted Monday, January 30, 2012 at 2:21 pm by Jason Cartwright
There’s an awful lot of rumours about Apple entering the TV market, but this is not it. Apple lawyers get ready for this, Hannspree is selling a 28” 1080p LCD. It’s pretty much the exact opposite of what an Apple branded TV would look like. There’s no clean lines, impressively simple UI and latest generation processor, it’s just an Apple shaped frame around a 28” HDTV.
If you really want to gasp at the nerve of Hannspree, check out the horrible infomercial video at HSN.
More info @ HSN via @Alex_Manchester
Review: Sennheiser X320 Headset for Xbox 360
Posted Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:39 am by Jason Cartwright
Gaming on you’re Xbox with the surround sound cranked may be fun, but will likely piss off your neighbours. Either that or the other people in your house. To solve this problem, you should consider some gaming headphones, particularly if you live in an apartment complex with thin walls.
Solving the volume out issue is one thing, but what about the volume in problem, you know, for those Xbox LAN sessions you have in the street.
Over the past month I’ve spent some time with the Sennheiser X320 gaming headset for the Xbox 360. It features a stylish and comfortable design with green accent, which matches the black / green design of the console. Weighing in at just 280grams, they become like a watch after a while, in that you forget you’re wearing them. Other headsets I’ve used become really uncomfortable after a long gaming session, but the X320 over-the-ear design worked great.
The headset also features a microphone that turns on when you flick it down, and off when you flick it up. It may not sound like a big deal, but its a hell of a lot easier than fumbling to find the mute switch between rounds.
The sound quality of the headset is really good, in fact I even picked up some engine noise intricacies in Forza 4 that I hadn’t noticed before. This is likely due to the low noise amplifier built into the X320.
Issues
While the sound quality is solid, there are a few issues with this headset. The first is the connections are overly complex. First there’s the USB cable connection, then there’s the red and white audio pass-through connectors, then there’s the microphone to controller cable. For such a stylish headset, this is a really ineloquent solution. Maybe it’s a technical limitation of the Xbox, but a simply USB cable to carry audio both ways would dramatically simplify the setup.
Like most users, I connect the Xbox 360 via HDMI these days, this means I had to go find the component cable to use these headphones.
The microphone level is adjustable via the in-line control (along with headphone volume and bass boost), but quickly introduce line noise. This is a pretty big flaw in the product, but if you can keep it low and talk louder, you can work around it.
Price
The Sennheiser X320 Xbox gaming headset sells for around A$199. Shop around and you could find it on sale as cheap as $179.
Gallery
Overall
There’s no way around it, these are expensive, but as a premium headset its not unexpected. The biggest issue is the limitation of Xbox-only. I tried plugging the X320 into the PC but they do not work as a regular headset. The only way I could swallow $200 for a headset is if I could use them for absolutely everything from the mobile phone to the TV. Sadly these are Xbox-only. There’s a bunch of gaming headsets in this space, so look at other options but if your after audio quality, keep the X320 in mind.
Shit Silicon Valley Says
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 12:12 pm by Jason Cartwright
We’re all too familiar with the hot buzz words and catch phrases in the technology industry. This video below pokes fun at the heart of technology, where a lot of startups come from, Silicon Valley.
The video features classics like “I retweeted it, I re-blogged it and I checked into it” and “They don’t even have a foursquare venue for their appartment.” My personal favourite is “Is the internet down”, but think they missed one – “OMG twitter’s down”.
It’s a light hearted, amusing 1 minute and 46 seconds, so relax on this Australia day and have a laugh between beers.
Adobe Photoshop CS6 goes dark, brings new tricks
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 11:09 am by Jason Cartwright
Senior Product Manager, Bryan O’Neil Hughes has shown off a sneak preview of Adobe Photoshop CS6. There’s a brand new default look to the interface, this time round it’s much darker. Hughes says it’s designed to allow for a more ‘immersive experience’ that lets the interface to fade away and the images to be the focus point.
Also detailed in the video below are some new features including a new processing tool for RAW support, with many of the features being completely rewritten. Although CS6 is still some time away from release, the new RAW engine is actually the same one used by the Lightroom 4 beta which is available as a free download from Adobe Labs.
There’s also a new rich cursor support, this provides information about brush diameter, hardness and opacity so you’ll know exactly what to expect when using the brush tool. It’s really early days for CS6, so expect there to be plenty more teasers in the lead up to its release, for now enjoy the 2:25 of video.
Every second, one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube.
Posted Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 10:48 am by Jason Cartwright
What an amazing statistic, every single second that goes by, more than one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube. If you every thought you’d watch every video on YouTube, forget it, that reality passed a long time ago.
Google have created a site http://onehourpersecond.com to visualise this milestone. There’s some great data like ‘In 24 seconds of uploads to YouTube, one full day elapses, and the nyan cat says “Nyan” over 345,600 times.’
HTC Velocity: Australia’s first 4G phone is fast, 39.85Mbps fast
Posted Monday, January 23, 2012 at 5:34 pm by Jason Cartwright
Android-focused site Ausdroid has got hands on with Australia’s first 4G phone, the HTC Velocity. Sure there’s been 4G hotspots and USB dongles before that run on Telstra’s 4G network, but this is the first phone. With all the other componentry inside a phone it was difficult to tell what speeds would be possible.
The answer is 32.82Mbps down and 11.2Mbps up. The post is correctly disclaimed with ‘your mileage may vary’, but still, it’s an impressive number. Why you would need mobile data that fast is another question. Naturally as more people move from 3G to 4G, the network congestion will increase and speeds will inevitably slow. This may be one instance where being an early adopter yields good benefits.
The only bad thing about this result is that it was done on a new device that will ship without Ice Cream Sandwich.
Update
Trevor Long just posted a photo on twitter with an even better result – 39.85 Mbps down and 11.88 Mbps. Clearly he was a little closer to the tower with a 39ms ping vs 127ms.
