Author: Daniel Sung
Panasonic HD Everything BD recorders – DMR-XS350, DMR-BS850 & DMR-BS750
Panasonic has announced their high-definition recording, Blu-ray solution pretty much summed up by their title of Panasonic HD Everything.
The DMR-XS350 High-Definition/DVD recorder, and the DMR-BS850 and DMR-BS750 Blu-ray disc recorders will all have Freesat+ decoders built in such that, so long as you’ve got a dish and a decent telly, you’re all set up to watch HD programming at no extra cost.
All the units feature a H.264 encoder to compress all the video files onto HDD and BD, which’ll mean you can save buckets of space, and they also feature DTS-Master Audio Essential and Dolby TruHD for an equally good surround sound production.
They’ve all got twin tuners so that you can record two programs at any one time, you can upoad images and video files directly for HDD storage, you can burn audio CDs and generally pretty much brush your teeth with them.
No word on availability and price but expect the two answer to be “soon” and “really expensive”.
GALLERY: LG Viewty II aka Smart specs and pics
Pictures and specs of the LG Viewty II have been announced on LG’s euroblog and, fortunately, the folks over at Electric Pig have both keen eyes and a decent knowledge of German.
The handset, which looks to be an exclusive to Orange from June, will be known as the LG Viewty Smart – or the LG GC900 if you prefer the robotic way of life – and, if you’d like a closer look at it and a few inside bits and pieces on the specs, then I suggest you click the image below to begin the tour…
eBay floating Skype IPO – grab yourself a stake in VoIP!
If this month’s news of Skype all over mobile phones of the world got you thinking how hot the VoIP company is right now, then you might be pleased to hear that eBay is letting the communications service loose on the stock market with an IPO all of its own.
Skype generated a cool $551 million in revenue in 2008 and, although they are beginning to run into the old market saturation problem, it doesn’t take a genius to see it’s all about the services they’ll be offering in the future rather the number of accounts.
So, if you think the future is sky blue, then you might want to set aside some cash for next year. Buy low in 2008, sell high peaking some time around 2013. That’s my completely inexperienced and entirely non-culpable piece of financial advice for the day.
Press Release
S2 Skypephone Review:
Yahoo! to go for a further round of lay offs
Yahoo! looks to be continuing it’s slow slide into total meltdown with rumours of a third round of lay offs within the last 12 months.
An insider told the NYT that cuts could come as quickly as next week and there’s every reason to think that the next one will be well in excess of 1,000 jobs with the first thousand leaving in early 2008 and a further 1,400 at the end of last year.
Yahoo! still gets 500 million or so eyes over its pages each and every month but, with the internet still booming, it’s the growth where they’re missing out. While Google was out buying Blogger and YouTube, Yahoo! missed opportunities to pick up Facebook and last year had to spend an awful lot of resources in talks with Microsoft. The offer from Gates, Ballmer & Sons will be starting to look very good right about now.
GALLERY: Packard Bell lightens up with EasyNote Butterflies and dot netbooks
For the budget end of the Acer family, Packard Bell has announced some rather swish looking options in the notebook/netbook department today. The cost seems to be that they’re perhaps not quite as cheap as you’d expect from PB but then that might have more to do with the exchange rate than anything else.
Each comes with some kind of Dolby sound technology and 16:9 wide, LED backlit screens to save as much battery life as possible. All look like reasonable options but it’s the EasyNote TR85 I’ve got my eye on the most.
Click the pretty looking image below for a closer look at all four.
Microsoft "Pink": ad agencies fighting over Zune phone account
Word has it that Microsoft is preparing for the launch of a Zune phone. Yes, we’ve heard these kinds of rumours and seen all sorts of mock ups before but this time it’s slightly different.
Microsoft has apparently put the cat amongst agency pigeons by searching for an advertising team to work on something known as “Pink”. Now on the one hand this could just be the colour scheme for Stevie B’s next bathroom suite but sources say that it’s most likely software for mobile phones.
Now it sits rather odd that The Soft would undermine Windows Mobile like that, despite what many consumers think about the platform, so it’s not out of the question that Pink could in fact be a Zune phone unto itself.
What we do know for sure is that the ad agencies are in a frenzy trying to get the account and in one shape or another, it looks like decent gaming might just be coming to mobile phones by CES 2010.
(via PMP today)
SHINY VIDEO PREVIEW: Nikon D5000 DSLR camera
I’ve just shinned it up and down London’s Centre Point Tower to get my hands on the Nikon D5000 family DSLR camera. My first impression after this morning’s thoughts are that it’s pretty small – not small like MP3 players or sub-atomic particles or anything but compared to the Nikon D90, below which the D5000 sits in the Nikon consumer range, it’s dinky. It’s rather like a D60. Just 550g in weight including the battery.
Once you get over the size of the thing, my next question for this family camera was: “Would I really let my kids run around with a £720 piece of kit?” I’m sure it’s as hardy as a DSLR can be but these things are all about the glass and it’s just too easy to scratch and destroy.
If Nikon does succeed with its mission to convince families to buy their camera then I do wonder how much it will eat into the sales of the D90.
Full spec sheet over the jump.
Megapixels – 12.9
Sensor type – CMOS
Autofocus points – 11-point AF
Crop factor – 1.5
Lens mount – Nikon F mount
Metering system – Matrix, Center-weighted, Spot
Frames per second – 4fps
ISO min – 200 (+ Lo-1 ISO 100 equivalent)
ISO max – 3200 (+ Hi-1 ISO 6400 equivalent)
Screen size – unique 2.7″ LCD vari-angle / free-rotation
Card format – SD card
Battery model – EN-EL9 & EN-EL9a (new, 1800mAh)
Weight (g) – 550g inc. battery
Size -127mmx104mmx69mm
Included accessories – Battery EN-EL9A, MH-23 battery charger, USB cable, AV cable, Body cap, eye-piece cap DK-5, Accessory shoe cover BS-1, Camera Strap AN-DC3, software CD Rom, Quick start guide, Manual, Warranty
Resolution – 12.3 million effective pixels
Aspect ratio – 3:2; 4:3; 5:4; 16:9; 1:1
Sensor size – 23.6 mm × 15.8 mm CMOS sensor
Autofocus system – Single-point AF; Dynamic-area AF;Auto-area AF; 3-D tracking AF
Exposure modes – Auto; P; S; A; M; 19 scene modes
Screen resolution – 230,000
File formats – JPEG; RAW; AVI
Connectivity – Type C HDMI; Hi-speed USB; Video output; Accessory terminal (remote cord / GPS)
Flash type – “Auto flash with auto pop-up P, S, A, M: Manual pop-up flash with button release”
Flash guide number – “• At ISO 200: Approx. 17m/56f, 18m/59f with manual flash
• At ISO 100: Approx. 12m/39f, 13m/43f with manual flash”
Flash metering “i-TTL
Auto aperture
Non-TTL auto
Range-priority manual”
Flash sync speed 1/200 sec.
Image stabilisation Yes (in VR the lens)
Integrated cleaning yes
Live view yes
Buffer depth (RAW) 10.6 MB, 268 images, 11 exposures
Buffer depth (JPEG) 100 exposures, 7700 images @ JPEG Basic small 0.4 MB
Shutter speed max 1/4000 sec.
Shutter speed min 30 sec.
VF coverage 95%
Vertical grip yes
Manufacturers link www.nikon.co.uk
Starting RRP £799.99 with 18-55mm VR lens; £749.99 body only.
LG launches WE5 – the UK's first anti-eyestrain monitor
It’s 1.30 in the afternoon and already I’m getting dryballs. My contact lenses want to leap off my corneas, I feel like it’s 3am in a smoky bar and I’m having to remind myself to blink as often as I can. LG reckons they’ve got an answer to this problem in the form of the LG WE5 eyestrain-minimizing monitor – the first of its kind the in the UK.
They come in a range of sizes between 18.5″ to 27″ (with all over 21″ offering 1080p HD displays) and seem to have borrowed a version of the LG ambient light sensor technology we’ve seen in LG TVs.
The idea is that the screen auto-adjusts to ambient lighting to give you enough LCD backlighting to be able to see what you’re doing without blinding you, but, just in case you don’t get the idea, it’ll actually remind you every once in a while that you probably ought to take a break from whatever it is you’re doing. A tenner says that gets ignored and switched off in 95% of WE5s.
They all come in 16:9 size with a digital contrast ratio of 50,000:1 and are available from May.
Nikon D5000: HD video recording with swivel screen
Nikon’s thrown us all a little curve ball this morning with what is essentially an upgrade and re-shape of the excellent D90 we saw released last year. The carefully named Nikon D5000 is a slightly softer, more consumer friendly approach to high end amateur photography.
It has the same 12.3-megapixel CMOS sensor and EXPEED processor combination as the D90, the same 200-3200 ISO range (100-6400 with boost) and indeed the same 11-point auto-focus system too.
The difference is that the LCD has slimmed a touch to 2.7″ but in return you can swivel it about in the most interesting of angles to ensure that you can shoot high, low, left, right and just about any which way you can think of with our having to squash your body into all sorts of awkward positions. They’ve even added a subject-tracking mode to the AF to make video capture even easier.
The second difference, and perhaps the more telling one, is the 19 scene modes Nikon has added to one of their top end consumer DSLRs. What it looks like they’re trying to create with the D5000 is a camera that all the family will be able to use – from the compact shooting casual to the very keen enthusiast.
It’ll be out from 1st May for £799.99 with the 18-55mm VR lens kit or £719 for the body on its own.
More to come on D5000 this afternoon.
Nikon
Logitech launches Ultimate Ears 700 noise isolators
Logitech has released a set of in-ear headphones this morning to sit right near the very top of their Ultimate Ears range. The UE 700s are noise isolators with dual armature drivers with one for bass and midrange and the other for high end and midrange.
They come in a hard case but weigh just 11.6g and will block out up to 26 dB of ambient sound with their snug-fitting, soft-silicone or foam compy ear cushions. You get three different sizes when you buy the £149.99 device just to make sure there’s no gaps between your lug holes and the rest of the world.
The idea is that you can listen to music at a relatively low level and so don’t end up distorting the sound of your music from pushing it too hard through whatever in-built amp you’re using.
Not cheap but, if the rest of the Ultimate Ears range is anything to go by, worth the money. Seventy-five per cent of the music industry can’t be wrong.
Noise cancelling headphones test:
Ultimate Ears
