ZVUE!, a handheld video player that has been spoken about for a while has now been publicly demonstrated. It plays MP3s, videos and displays photographs, all for $99.
It is thought that the price is kept so low by only allowing video in the proprietary HHE format to play. This content will need to be bought direct from HandHeld Entertainments, the company behind it. They plans to have it in the shops by October.
Audio Interview with CEO & story link
Hand Held Entertainment
Using a wireless 802.11b, WiFi connection to a computer, this $249 (£159) DVD player can also pull photo’s, audio and video from your PC, after installing media server software on your PC. Media files on the network can be navigated using the player’s remote control, through a Windows Explorer-like interface on the TV.
Not all media format are supported. On the audio side, the player supports MP3 and WMA audio, but not Ogg Vorbis or AAC formats. Only MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video formats are available for playback, but surprisingly there is no support for AVI (including DivX), MOV, or WMV files. JPEG images are supported but TIFF or BMP are not – which isn’t much of a problem.
The review reports the delivery of photos and music files worked well over the wireless link but video struggled, which sound like a bandwidth problem. It’s not clear from the review what the quality of the wireless connection was and it may have been that the DVD player was placed a long way away from the PC holding the media, and bandwidth delivery could have been patchy.
It sound like a reasonable initial start for Gateway in the media hub arena but the media server software still have a few bugs that need to be ironed out.
Microsoft have been given the all clear to bringing out a wireless 54Mb version of the Xbox, after they won approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Knowledge of this came about after the FCC posted information of the approval on their Web site in error. Interestingly Advance Data Technology Corp. of Taiwan is listed as the technical contact of the applications.
UK software company Redxpress have created DVD copying software, DVD CopyWare, which is to be distributed with DVD burners by DVD drive company Tritton Technologies. It will also be distributed by a number of US retailers including buy.com and will be released this coming Monday in the UK, carried by the chain PC World.
Alex Theochari, CEO of Redxpress told Digital-Lifestyles.info that consumers have a right to create personal backups of their own DVDs and pointed out that current copyright law protects content for 100 years, so films like Gone with the wind which was made in 1932 would be out of copyright by 2032 and following that, copies could be made as often as required.
The timing of the release is of particular interest after a California Supreme Court earlier this week. It ruled that the public posting of software on the Internet that broke the Content Scramble System (CSS), used to protect DVD content, was not supporting free speech but was in fact disclosing trade secrets. This overturned a previous ruling in a lower court. It was seen as a victory for the film business in their effort to restrict the copying of their content.
Redxpress tell us they have made provision for legal action, a wise move as we would expect the weight of the US film industry legal representation bearing down on them at any minute.
KiSS was the first licensee of the DivX codec for use in a DVD player, now DivX.com will be the first retail channel for the DP-500 at a price of $299.
In addition to supporting DivX 3.xx, 4.xx and 5.xx.video technology, the DP-500 offers a number of cutting edge features including progressive scan, Ethernet 10/100, Internet radio streaming, PC-Link, support for DVD, SVCD, VCD, CD, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, CD-RW & DVD-RW/+RW playback, and a photo album feature that enables users to view digital photos on a television.
As at 30 June, Sky added 77,000 Sky+ subscribers to reach 105,000, exceeding their 100,000 target. Tony Ball, Chief Executive for Sky said they were planning to “play around” with the pricing of Sky+ as he felt DVR’s offered interesting possibilities.
165,000 Sky subscribers also have the Extra Digibox, enabling the household to watch Sky programming in more than one room. 57% of Sky+ subscribers are also Extra Digibox subscribers.
Sony have announced that they will release two new plasma TVs in Japan later this year.
The exciting thing about the uninspiringly named KDE-P50HZ1 and KDE-P42HZ1 is that they come with a remote-control-on-steroids, better described as a web pad.
The multi-function 6-by-3.5-inch display, which gives an 800-by-480-pixel resolution, communicates with the main TV unit using 802.11a giving the ability to use it to view a different TV channel; browse the Web; and be used as a ‘soft’ remote control – the function and display on the remote will change depending on the which operation is being carried out.
Sony are saying the remote will understand gesture-based fingertip strokes – think PalmOS Grafitti for entertainment (They already licience PalmOS for their Clie PDA range). Sony has dubbed this as an “air baton”.
Although not mentioned, there is a possibility that the Web pad coudl be used The opens up the a long held belief – interactivity on the remote.
These products fit within Sony’s project, code-named Altair, designed to make the TV the centre of consumers digital lifestyles.
Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the Japanese newspaper that reported that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO said the Xbox successor, Xbox2, would be launched in 2006 have now issued a retraction statement.
The usual technique of talking about what companies will be doing with their next generation of equipment has been going on for a while with gaming consoles. Talk of the PlayStation 2 came out around the same time as the Xbox was released. It’s all an effort to make unsettle the consumer of the rivals products.While in Japan, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said they were planning to release the Xbox2 in 2006 – what isn’t clear is if this would be the release date for Japan or Worldwide. Some analysts are wondering if this date is being floated as it matched the year given by Sony for the PS3 and Microsoft aren’t rushing the Xbox2 out so as to give the Xbox box as many years as possible to make back some of the losses they’ve had on the project to date.In a typical large company PR fog type of way, MS reps are quoted as saying
“Our executives often talk about the future in terms of vision and the possibilities of technology. This is what allows us to be innovative as a company.”
At the same time a MS VP Peter Moore, has been telling conference delegates in London at the Games Summit that MS “have no plans” to bring out a handheld gaming device, saying that as hand held games were solitary experience, they had no future. This really sound like someone shooting from the hip and not carefully thinking about where these devices are or where they will be in the future. There a big future for networked games on handheld devices, I’ve had games demoed to me running on handheld devices, including Smartphones that really come alive when they played against other people.
Sony have released the Vaio PCG-GRT190G — a high-spec portable that has built in TV tuner and PVR. Their interesting marketing angle is it’s for executives that are really busy, so they need to shift their viewing and watch the recorded shows when they’re on the move.Video – BB NB