Platforms

Hauppauge Nova-s PC Card Offers Freesat TV Via Sky
Hauppauge Digital have whipped out a new add-on card to convert a boring old PC into a multimedia-tastic satellite TV receiver.
Their new WinTV Nova-s card receives free satellite channels (the -s is for satellite), and will work with Sky’s Freesat, that give free access to the unencrypted channels on Sky, which are currently all of the BBC offering and soon ITV (hopefully). Sky normally charge you £150 for the privilege.
Once they’ve shelled out for the £59.99 (~$103, ~€87) decoding device, punters won’t need a viewing card or subscription fees to enjoy free satellite transmissions on their desktop.
The card is aimed at consumers who already have a satellite dish stuck on their roof/wall, with Hauppauge suggesting that the WinTV Nova-s would be ideal for a PC “in the kitchen, study or bedroom as an additional digital TV.”
Owners can watch full screen satellite TV on their desktop, or have a smaller window open whilst trying to work on something else (yeah, right: who’s going to carry on working on their VAT return when there’s some top notch footie onscreen?!)
The Nova-s is compatible with Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition, and also offers the option to record shows to the PC’s hard disk. It will also work with all-round media handlers like ShowShifter.
At the moment, the Hauppauge’s WinTV Nova-s can receive all the BBC TV channels (including One, Two, Three, Four, CBBC, Cbeebies and BBC News24 and Radios 1 to 7.)
ITV currently encrypts, or scrambles, its satellite transmissions using the service provided by Sky, but will soon be following BBC’s lead and broadcasting its channels without encryption, so they can be viewed any satellite receiver.
This means that ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and the ever-fascinating Men&Motors will become available soon, with more channels to be added in 2006 when Freesat officially launches.
Freesat will be the satellite equivalent of Freeview,” said Yehia Oweiss, Managing Director of Hauppauge Digital. “Already broadcasting BBC, the service will be available to all UK households and bring free digital TV to the 25 per cent who are outside Freeview’s area. Consumers can buy our Freesat tuner now and enjoy many digital channels now, with more being added all the time.”
The WinTV Nova-s looks reasonably future proofed too, offering HDTV (High Definition TV) compatibility, with HDTV broadcasts expected to be delivered by satellite in 2006/7
Freesat’s EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) will be made available on the Hauppauge card, but for now the information can be downloaded through the Internet.
The Hauppauge WinTV Nova-s also provides a video input socket for slapping in a camcorder and digitising the content into MPEG format for editing and burning to DVD.
Hauppauge
Showshifter
21 November, 2005
One Laptop per Child: The Machine, The Impact
The $100 laptop project launched by MIT Media Lab, gained a big boost yesterday when the labs Nicholas Negroponte met with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.
Kofi Annan opening address summed up the project and its hopes succinctly, “The true meaning of one laptop per child, is not a matter of just giving a laptop to a child, as if bestowing on them some magic charm. The magic lies within. Within each child there is a scientist, scholar, or just plain citizen in the making. This initiative is design to bring it forth into the light of day.”
No right thinking individual could possibly doubt the value of this project. There may be a lot of commercial concerns, but we’ll get to that later on.
The Specs
It will be Linux-based, full-colour laptop that uses a wind-up handle as a power source. Run at 500MHz, with 1GB of memory and a built in 1 Megapixel camera it should run most applications that could be required (remember Linux doesn’t suck up a lot of the processors power). Just the laptop screen alone is expected to cost around $35, pretty good when a screen on a laptop is normally $150 alone.
“USB ports galore” will be provided as will built-in WiFi. The only thing it will be missing is a hard drive. We’d imagine that this will be down to the additional power drain they have, and to try and maintain the necessary ruggedness. The networking will be via a wireless mesh.
The driving theory of the project is that Learning is seamless – not just something that you do at school. This has lead to the need for an adaptable design, enabling it to be used as an electronic book (with the fingers at the back controlling the cursor), a games machine, TV set and, of course, laptop.
All software will be open source as in Negroponte view “open source software is the key to innovation in software and learning technology.”
It’s been reported that Steve Jobs had offered Apple OSX for nothing for use in the project, but it was turned down as it wasn’t open source.
Availability and impact
The laptops will be financed though domestic resources (ie the countries government), donors, and what was rather mysteriously described as “other arrangements.” It will be at no cost to the recipients themselves.
The current plans call for producing five to ten million units near the start of late 2006 or early 2007, launching in six countries. Not bad considering that Negroponte first publicly announced it in January 2005. The promise is to bring the price down at each technical advance.
Negroponte spoke about “the same laptop being commercially available, at say $200” for small businesses. They hope to announce the construction partners soon.
The impact of this project could be huge on many fronts – if it comes into being – and we’ve no reason to imagine that it won’t. Giving any and every child access to a computer, and teaching them to use it and inspiring them will be the start of a revolution bring free communication and equal learning to all citizens.
We don’t think that the impact will stop there. If the world is aware that there are laptops, perfectly able to carry out most daily required computing functions, that only cost $100, why would anyone want to pay for other ‘full price’ machines? The impact on the supply of hardware in the part of the world that already has computers will be huge.
All power to this project. Let’s help technology change the world for the better.
MIT Media Lab One Laptop Per Child
Watch the Launch video(Real video)
17 November, 2005
Jens MP-X: First All-Weather MP3 Player
One of our Digital-Lifestyles favorite digital media entrepreneur Swede, Jens Nylander has extracted himself from recent problems and brought out a new mp3 player called MP-X.
You want firsts? Well, it’s the first all-weather mp3 player. A smart selling point in damp areas like much of Northern Europe, especially in Sweden, where their public weather monitor say that more than half of their days over the last 30 years have had an average of 0.1mm of rain or more.
Aimed at fit-types, another good move given the amount of outdoor fans there are in Sweden, it’s made of soft and durable urethane rubber which repels all of that sweating and doesn’t get knocked around.
Two versions are available. It comes in 512 Mb and 1 Gb versions (150 or 300 songs), only weighing the equivalent of six A4-pages of paper and cost €68 (~£46, ~$79) or €85 (~£57, ~$99) respectively excluding sales tax.
As with previous Jens players it supports MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG-Vorbis music files.
We’re glad to see Jens back on his feet, following his bankruptcy after a miscalculation of import duty (they should have paid 10% because of built-in FM radio, not the 2.5% they’d calculated at). They tell us that all of the debts have now been met and the $25k that they still owe to the post office will be made up through new trade.
Jens of Sweden
16 November, 2005
WM1185-T: Accton’s Skype-Embeded WiFi Phone
Accton Technology has unveiled a Skype-enabled Wi-Fi phone, the SkyFone WM1185-T in Tokyo.
The big difference with this handset is that it uses an embedded version of Skype, meaning that the handset can operate without the need for a PC, as other current handsets do. Accton is one of the first companies to do so.
It’s been reported that the handset has a 4 hour talk time and around 20 hour standby. It is expected to retail for $150 (~£86~€127).
Accton plan to ship 5,000 handsets in December to Skype’s business partners and wireless broadband service providers worldwide for testing.
This is exactly the type of deal that we thought that Skype would be doing and fits perfectly into our thought of The Genius of eBay Buying Skype, where Skype turns in to the next Vodafone and eBay becomes the largest phone shop in the World, sitting between the third-party handset producers and a world of customers.
Prior to this, Accton have been producing other WiFi VoIP handsets like their VM1188B (see top), but they ran SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) not Skype.
If you’ve never heard of Accton, you’re like the vast majority of people, even those specialising in keeping a close eye on this sector. They’re a Taiwanese company better known for producing network equipment, recently reported a pre-tax profit following seven quarters of loss.
Accton consumer electronics
9 November, 2005
Blue Bsh-100: Anycom’s Bluetooth Headset With Mic
It has taken the Bluetooth headset industry a remarkably long time to twig that we don’t want to use one headset for listening to music, and then frantically rip it off to use another Bluetooth headset for answering the phone. Anycom has the one… at a price.
The company has announced the blue bsh-100 headset [right] which, at first sight, is just another of those “hang-on-both-ears” stereo headsets for iPod users. Except for the little black bit jutting out of the right earpiece. That’s the audio input device, or microphone. [see left]
It’s described as “a wireless unit that offers multiple settings for hi-fi stereo headphone for digital audio, Bluetooth headset with attachable microphone for use with mobile phones and PC peripheral using a USB Bluetooth adapter for gaming, chat and VoIP.”
And (if it works as described) the best feature will undoubtedly be its ability to connect to your PC and your phone at the same time. If a call comes in while you’re listening to streaming audio, it will switch to the phone. Of course, this won’t work if you don’t also have a Bluetooth transmitter on your PC, and so you may have to buy one.
And the icing on the cake: a Bluetooth audio gateway. Without further details (actual hands-on reviews!) this is probably going to seem more wonderful than it can in reality be: but what we’re hoping it will do, is allow you to plug several audio inputs into it, and switch between them – from landline phone to Skype, from Skype to iPod, from iPod to mobile phone.
Price in the US has been announced at $120 (~£68~e102) for the headset, and $29 (~£16~e24) for the audio adapter.
Guy Kewney write extensively, and quite brilliantly, in lots of places, including NewsWireless.net
Anycom
9 November, 2005
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet Ships
We first reported the news of the existence of the Nokia 770 back in May 2005, when Janne Jormalainen, Vice President of Convergence Products, Multimedia at Nokia showed it to a slightly stunned crowd at LinuxWorld Summit in New York. Now it’s shipping.
At the time, we enthused – naturally. How else could we react to a WiFi-powered Web browsing tablet with a 65k colour screen, that gives 3 days of browsing or 7 days of standby? We saw it as the TV watching buddy that we’ve always wanted. We could finally dump the laptop, removing its leg-heating characteristics at the same time.
Well today, Nokia are announcing its actual availability and they’ve expanded its capabilities to enable Web browsing using Bluetooth via your mobile.
We were naturally straight on the phone to Nokia, lining up our review copy. We’d been aware of a version floating around for a while, but knew the release of software it had on it really didn’t cut the mustard. Soon, dear reader our impression of it will be revealed.
For Linux hackers everywhere, there’s the great excitement that the 770 will be running Debian Linux, with the new platform – derived from the Linux GNOME UI – going under the name “maemo”. Development on maemo has continued since May and the end of October saw the release of maemo 1.1 Release Candidate 5. They’ve even given it the fancy new name of Nokia Internet Tablet 2005, if you please.
Nokia are actively encouraging ‘Hackers’ to produce software for it. They’ve even got a maemo WiKi (shock, horror).
VoIP was hinted at back in May. It’s now been confirmed by our old mate Janne Jormalainen, “During the first half of year 2006 we will launch the next operating system upgrade to support more presence based functionalities such as VoIP and Instant Messaging.”
For once with a technology product, Europe will be seeing this little beauty first, with the US having to wait a whole week longer. Prices appear to have shifted a little, upwards sadly, to €350 ($412, £240).
Nokia 770
7 November, 2005
MacExpo UK Review (2/2)
Further to the first part of this review.
Hash showed off Animation Master which is a very simple (if you believe the demos) animation package. It has a huge library of pre-built characters, objects and even things like types of walks for the characters. Lip syncing even looked easy. Though the package is simple, you probably need some basic creative skills and understanding of animation to do anything sensible with it. Visit their Website and look in the gallery, the video of “I will survive” of Gloria Gaynor fame is a true classic.
Shure had their in-ear phones and were letting people try them (using replaceable foam in-ear sleeves, the comments from staff about ear wax were not pleasant). The big news is that they are now available in black to suit both iPod and PSP users. The black E4c’s (previously reviewed on the site) look better, but don’t sound any better, as this would be hard as they already sound so good.
There were lots of iPod and laptop cases and Be.ez make a range that can hold your iPod and accessories, laptop, laptop accessories and one that holds a Mac mini AND keyboard meaning you can almost use your mini as a laptop. All the cases are made out of 5mm polyurethane adequately protecting whatever’s inside.
LaCie had lots of disk systems on offer (firewire, USB and Ethernet) offering easy access to multi-terrabytes of data. An external 5 1/4″ drive (the size of a CD-ROM drive) can hold up to 1TB (big disk) while the double width bigger disk extreme can hold up to 2TB. There’s also external RAID drives, the biggest F800 holds up to 2TB supporting Firewire 800 (up to 80MB/s transfers) and the biggest S25 support 160MB/s and up to 2.5GB (which is 3GB internal) both support hot-swappable drives. The newest addition is the mini which looks just like a Mac mini and sits underneath it (and can be stacked with more minis), each one containing up to 250MB of disk.
Roxio have released Toast v7 which now is much more than just CD/DVD burning software, it can now create music DVDs with menu navigation, HD photo shows and much more.
Many usual suspects were there (Adobe, Quark) but Macromedia weren’t, maybe this is due to Adobe buying them?
Hopefully next year the show will revert to more of an expo and less of a computer fair.
Hash
Shure
Be.ez
LaCie
Roxio
4 November, 2005
Nokia N92 With DVB-H Receiver, N80, N71 Announced
Nokia has announced three more Nokia N series multimedia devices, the Nokia N92 (the world’s first mobile device with a built-in DVB-H receiver), the Nokia N71 and the Nokia N80.
All three multimedia -tastic handsets support all GSM bands, 3G, WLAN, corporate email access and advanced voice functionality (including IP PBX connectivity over WLAN), and come with integrated security features.
Nokia N92
Most interesting is the Nokia N92, which has the honour of being the world’s first mobile device with a built-in DVB-H receiver, letting users watch and record live TV on the move.
A curious swivelling, flip-top affair, the N92 comes with a large (2.8″) anti-glare QVGA screen supporting 16 million colours and dedicated media keys
The Nokia N92 sports a shedload of functionality for watching and searching for TV programs, with an Electronic Service Guide (ESG) offering information about available TV channels, programs and services
Using the built in software, users can also create personal channel lists, subscribe to TV-channel packages, set program reminders and interact through services such as voting, program feedback and additional web discovery.
For web surfing, the Nokia N92 comes with the new Nokia Web Browser with Mini Map, which displays a semi-transparent zoomed-out view of a web page, enabling users to quickly zip about a large page on a small screen.
Branded as a Nokia XpressMusic device, the handset offers up to 2 GB memory card support, and ships with built-in stereo speakers and stereo headset.
The N92 also comes with a digital music player, FM radio with Visual Radio support (providing interactive information on playing songs and artists) and an onboard 2 megapixel camera.
Connectivity is ably taken care of with Wi-Fi, infrared, Bluetooth and USB 2.0 support.
Based on S60 3rd Edition and Symbian OS, the Nokia N92 is expected to be in the shops by mid 2006 in Europe, with a price tag around €600.
Nokia N80
Sporting WLAN and 3G, the Nokia N80 is being touted as the world’s first handset to feature UPnP technology, and has the ability to be used as a remote control for wirelessly swapping content between PCs, audio equipment and TVs.
So long as all the gear is compatible, images and video stored on a Nokia N80 can be viewed on a TV, while MP3s on the handset can be played through an audio system.
Photos snapped on the Nokia N80 can also be printed wirelessly to any UPnP-enabled printer or photo kiosk.
Nokia N80 is also the first quadband handset designed to work on 3G (WCDMA 1900 or 2100), WLAN, EDGE and four GSM bands (850/900/1800/1900).
The phone features a sliding design with a high definition, 352 x 416 pixels display.
There’s a hefty 3 megapixel camera with capture key, full-screen landscape capture, a close-up mode switch and CIF video capture with inbuilt video stabilisation.
Storage comes in the form of 40 MB of internal memory, with support for miniSD cards of up to 2 GB.
The Nokia N80 has a built in digital music player and stereo FM radio with Visual Radio support.
Available in the first quarter of 2006, the price is expected to be €500.
Nokia N71
Finally, we come to the N71, another member of the Nokia XpressMusic family.
Billed as a “pocket-sized entertainment system”, the Nokia N71 comes with a stereo FM radio, support for digital music and videos and new Nokia Web Browser with Mini Map.
We could only find a teensy-weensy picture of the 3G clam phone as we went to print, but we can tell you that is has two displays and two cameras, one of which is a 2-megapixel camera.
Speaking at the Nokia Mobility Conference, Nokia Chairman and CEO Jorma Ollila bigged up digital convergence:
“We expect the market for convergence devices to double to 100 million units in 2006. Developers, media companies and enterprises are shifting their focus to Nokia’s S60 smartphone platform, as they see the business potential of using it to offer content and ensure secure remote access to corporate applications”
“Convergence is opening up a world of opportunities for our customers and partners, and Nokia is committed to developing the tools, solutions and products to make the promise of the digital industry a reality,” Ollila added.
Nokia
2 November, 2005
Samsung M70 Hybrid PC With Detachable Screen Unveiled
The best thing about Samsung’s press photos is that they always feature groups of attractive young ladies deliriously happy to be touching their latest products.
Whether it be phones, TV displays, laptops or detachable screens, you’ve only got to thrust the product into the willing arms of these beaming ladies and a winning PR photo is ready for the taking.
So when we heard about Samsung’s new “desktop and laptop in one” hybrid PC, the M70, we knew we were in for a treat. And we weren’t disappointed.
Coming in two parts – the laptop and its detachable 19″ screen – we were confident that we’d be in for double the fun and, sure enough, we were rewarded with happy-clappy shots of two ladies near-ecstatic to be fondling the electronics.
Although we’d like to think that we’d never get quite that excited about gadgets, we have to say that Samsung’s new laptop looks like a winner.
Anyone who’s used a laptop for a long time will soon get fed up with the uncomfortably low viewing angle, so being able to yank the display off and stick it on a taller stand might certainly do wonders for your posture.
Happily, Samsung have had the nous to ensure that they used standard monitor connectors too, so that the laptop can be connected to a bigger screen (for giving a corporate presentation, for example) – and even the display can be used with a different PC.
This interoperability also means that if the screen packs up on the laptop, you can still use the thing with a cheap desktop replacement. Neat.
Full technical details, pricing and availability is yet to be announced, but we can tell you that the laptop packs a whopping 19″ WSXGA+ (1680×1050) HDTV compatible screen and is powered by a Pentium M770 (2.13GHz) CPU.
The machine ships with 1Gb of DDR 533MHz RAM onboard, offers 100Gb HDD storage, has high quality stereo speakers and Wireless LAN built in and weighs a shoulder-bothering 4.4kg.
Samsung
2 November, 2005
Record PDA Shipments Expected For 2005: Gartner
Helped by big European growth, global PDA (personal digital assistant) shipments whizzed up 21% in the third quarter of 2005, according to analysts Gartner.
The figures revealed that a total of 3.45 million units were shipped between July and September, representing a 20.7% increase from the same period last year.
The market now looks set to reach a total of 15 million units shipped for 2005, outstripping the previous record of 13.2 million units in 2001.
“The rapid spread of wireless e-mail and use of GPS-enabled PDAs, which offer most of the functionality of dedicated car navigation systems at a fraction of the cost, is propelling the PDA market to record growth,” commented Gartner analyst Todd Kort.
“This growth is most noticeable in Europe. In fact, Europe is catching up with North America in terms of usage of PDAs in vertical markets and the use of cellular wireless PDAs,” Kort added.
The biggest shipment rise was recorded by Research in Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry device, growing 52.6% in the third quarter as the company extended its lead as the top dog worldwide PDA vendor.
Things weren’t so rosy for Hewlett-Packard’s iPAQ, with shipments declining 20.2% in the third quarter, and things were even worse for former PDA kings PalmOne, who saw their shipments slide a massive 36%.
Palm’s poor showing is exaggerated by the fact that the research didn’t include their hugely popular Palm Treo 650 (other Smartphones like the BlackBerry 7100 were also excluded, but wireless PDAs like the iPAQ 65xx and Nokia 9300 were included).
Microsoft maintained its pole position as the leading PDA operating system supplier, accounting for 49.2 percent of worldwide shipments in the third quarter of 2005, with RIM at number two (25%) followed by Palm at just under 15 percent.
Overall, the Western European PDA market grew 53.4% in the third quarter of 2005, with 1.2 million units shipped.
The region accounted for 34.2% of worldwide shipments (and 70% of the worldwide growth compared to a year ago), up from 26.9% one year ago.
In the States, shipments were relatively flat, totalling 1.4 million units (up 2.2%) although the market still accounted for 41% of worldwide PDA shipments.
Gartner
2 November, 2005