Category: Platforms

Microsoft Announces Plans for Your Digital Living Room and 22 New Security Flaws in Windows Products

Microsoft began the latest phase of its big push for consumers’ digital lives by unveiling Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005 (MCE) and a host of products designed to work alongside it.

Bill G and Queen Latifah demonstrated the most recent features in MCE at an event in Los Angeles, highlighting integration with Windows Media Player 10 and a compatibility with a range of new hardware devices.

To coincide with the do, Microsoft’s main press release describes a hypothetical family and how they might use digital media across the day – from recording TV programmes via their web browser to broadcasting music around the home using a Media Centre Extender.

The company also announced 22 new security holes in its Windows range whilst issuing an update to address them. One of the new flaws managed to affect Macintosh OSX users.

By promoting MCE as a digital hub, the company hopes to show consumers that they can view, share and store their movies, music and pictures around the home and on the move. To reinforce their view of the future, the company also announced a number of devices from partners like HP, Dell and Creative Labs.

Music is a very important part of MS’s plans, with Windows Media 10 and MSN Music receiving another PR boost. Amongst the devices promoted by MS were new Digital Audio Receivers from Dlink, Roku and MoniFi which are designed to play digital music from a central source in any room of the house. Creative, Gateway, iRiver and other also announced new digital media players for the Christmas season, with capabilities ranging from simple music to full video playback.

Will Poole, senior vice president for the Windows Client division at Microsoft said in a statement: “For years, many in the consumer electronics industry have viewed digital entertainment as a field of dreams: if you provide consumers with a solution, they’ll build it into a larger experience – regardless of cost or complexity. Windows XP Media Centre PC and all of these other devices and services make it possible, for the first time, for the average consumer to enjoy digital entertainment anywhere, anytime and in any way.”

Microsoft’s Media experience

Mattel’s Juice Box Media Player for Kids

Mattel are launching their new Juice Box media player on 17th October. The cute little gadget is intended to introduce kids between the ages of 8 and 12 to the delights of digital media.

Since the Juice Box will play MP3s, photos and video clips delivered through proprietary Juiceware media cards that store nearly three hours of content, you too can introduce your offspring to the frustration of proprietary formats and DRM schemes before they even get to secondary school. The cards will cost about US$10 (€8.11) for two episodes of an animated series, up to US$25 (€20) for a feature, and the format used is based on a technology developed by 4Kids Entertainment.

Initially, Mattel will be offering content from BMG Music, Cartoon Network, WWE and the Learning Channel for the Juice Box. If you don’t want your audio and picture content to be locked into someone else’s DRM, kids can buy a separate “MP3 Starter Kit” which comes with a standard SD card so they can play MP3s and view pictures from their PCs. No video though – and the kit will cost and additional US$45 (€37).

The 11.5 x 8.5 x 1.5 inch device has a 3 inch LCD and will run for six hours on three AA batteries (also not included), and features a built in speaker plus headphone connector. So that the US$70 (€57) Juice Box doesn’t get scratched to bits whilst tumbling around in the bottom of a rucksack, it comes with a flip cover to protect the display.

€20 for a low resolution film on a card that you can’t watch anywhere else? And how well is Nintendo’s cartoon player for the GameBoy Advance doing anyway? And the Zvue? I think you can already see my point here.

Mattel’s press release

Buy them from Amazon US
JUICE BOX Personal Media Player (Blue)
JUICE BOX Personal Media Player (Red)

Apple’s Colour Screen iPod by Christmas

Rumours of a new iPod are appearing – fuelled by a report on macintosh rumour site Think Secret. The new iPod is said to be built around a 60Gb drive and have a 2.2” high resolution colour screen. Users will also be able to view album artwork on the screen whilst listening to their music libraries, so let’s hope Apple have done something about the battery capacity then, because that sounds like about two hours of play time right there.

Better still, the screen is intended to display colour pictures from digital cameras copied to the the iPod – an extension of the photo storage facility introduced in a recent software update. Additional rumours state that the new player will be able to display pictures on a TV, perhaps even set to music.

As far as looks go, the casing for the new iPod will follow the design of its predecessors, although 2mm thicker… possibly to accomodate a new, higher-capacity battery.

There is no official confirmation about the new iPod from Apple, and nor will there be – the company never make statements about forthcoming products. Though some claim they do have a tendency to drop rumours here and there to stoke interest.

Several factors have combined to add a note of authenticity to the latest rumours: the new PP5020 processor from iPod chipmaker PortalPlayer features support for a colour display and TV output – whilst playing music. Toshiba, disk supplier for Apple’s iPod, has also just announced a new 1.8” 60Gb drive – and let slip that Apple had ordered a large quantity of them.

If a new colour screen iPod is on its way, then the timing is sure to lead to shortages as fans try to ensure they get on in time for Christmas, particularly at the rumoured price of US$499 (€402).

Think Secret

Tapwave Zodiac Joins European Market

Can’t decide whether to buy a DS, PSP, N-Gage QD or Gizmondo? Well, European gamers can not at the Tapwave Zodiac to their list of handheld consoles to check out.

The multimedia handheld will be available on the high street from 22nd October – and it’s at the expensive site end of the market. A 32mb Zodiac 1 will set you back UK£269.99 (€391), the 128mb Zodiac 2 will cost you UK£329.99 (€477). Its nearest functional equivalent, Sony’s PSP is expected to cost nearer UK£200. (€290).

Games, stored on SD cards, are priced at UK£29.99 and will include Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, SpyHunter, DOOM II Duke Nukem Mobile. There will also be two compilation packs – Z Pak: Adventure, which will include Galactic Realms and Legacy; and Z Pak: Fun featuring Paintball, MegaBowling and Kickoo’s Breakout. More titles are promised for Christmas.

The Zodiac is built around an ARM9 processor and a ATI Imageon chipset, running PalmOS — and so is being pitched as considerably more than just a games machine: the hardware and OS used mean that users can play video, read ebooks and listen to music, and enjoy the huge library of Palm software that already exists. But will the public be willing to shell out for what appears to be a specialised Palm Pilot?

Nokia have already had their hands burned badly in the handheld games console market twice – and with two very compelling units from Sony and Nintendo, not to mention the Gizmondo GPS gaming, it’s going to be a very tough market for the Zodiac to survive in. Given that floor space is very expensive in the run up to Christmas, any new console will have to prove itself very quickly before retailers move it on in favour of something that will shift more units.

The Tapwave Zodiac

Nintendo DS’s Launch Line Up

Nintendo always make a big deal out of the software that’s available for their consoles when they launch – they know that the box itself isn’t any use on it’s own, and that customers need a compelling reason to walk out of the shop with a Nintendo console under their arm. The games company don’t always manage to get it right though – as was seen with the launch of the N64, and the US launch of the GameCube. Where were Mario, Samus and Zelda?

So, Nintendo have announced with great fanfare the titles that will be available around the launch of the DS – and whilst they’ve got a Mario title in there (they learned from that mistake then), not all titles will be in the shops on November 21st. Mario had better be, for their sake. The games announced are Madden NFL 2005, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf, the Urbz: Sims in the City, Ping Pals, Feel the Magic XY/XX, Raymand DS, Ridge Racer DS, Mr Driller: Drill Spirits, Asphalt Urban GT, and of course, Super Mario 64.

It’s disappointing that there will be no Animal Crossing, Zelda, Metroid or Advance Wars titles at launch, but Nintendo are promising that they will be along in the coming months. Nintendo need these titles to differentiate their handheld console from the forthcoming PSP which will have pretty much the same sports games on it. However, the DS has an advantage over the PSP when it comes to sports simulations games as it has two screens: for example in Madden NFL 2005, one screen will show all 22 players with the other zooming on the action.

With 120 titles in development for the DS, there certainly won’t be a shortage of software for it – and it’ll need every single game if it’s not to be trounced by Sony’s PSP.

Nintendo’s Launch Line-up

Another Year, Another AIBO

Sony have announced another upgrade to their AIBO entertainment robot series, with the focus shifting away from cute tricks to becoming useful part of a household entertainment system.

The new ERS-7M2/W (white) and ERS-7M2/B (black) have the same style of casing as the previous top of the range AIBOs, but with a new finish and upgraded software and hardware under the hood, as it were.

AIBOs nose camera can now shoot video, which Sony says makes it an effective house-sitter. Given that AIBO will probably be the first thing in the back of the van if the owner gets burgled, I’m not sure if the robot’s ability to email a video clip of the view under a robber’s armpit will be especially useful. Regular emails of sound- or motion-activated photographs from home whilst you’re on holiday might bring peace of mind to some though.

AIBO can also play music from his speakers whilst dancing too – and can creak along to WAV, WMA and even MP3. Little pirate. AIBO’s Scheduler is compatible with Microsoft Outlook, so now he can remind you of any important appointments you might have via its text-to-speech interface. “Get head seen to”, for example.

The robot’s software has been optimised for much faster reaction times to spoken commands, along with better face tracking and obstacle avoidance routines – making it appear more lifelike and responsive.

All this canine robot fun will cost you US$1900 (€1545), and existing AIBO users can upgrade to AIBO Mind 2 software for $99 (€80).

Check out new AIBO

Sony’s Vaio Type X Media Centre

Sony have launched their latest convergent device onto the Japanese market – a digital media centre for the home with huge storage and potential. The Vaio Type X is essentially a PC with four 250Gb hard drives and seven television tuners in it, though “only” 500Gb is available for PVR functions. This means that lucky Japanese owners can record everything that’s broadcast on the country’s seven network stations all week, and then just delete the shows they’re not interested in. This brings timeshifting television into an entirely different phase with consumers selecting what they don’t want to watch, rather than what they do want.

Recorded programmes are presented in a thumbnail view, so that users can visually select what they want to watch – Sony call this the Time Machine View, and content can be sorted in a number for ways, chronologically or by genre for example.

The Vaio Type X has two tuner cards with three analogue tuners each – plus an integrated tuner on the main board itself. A digital tuner is an optional extra.

The other 500Gb is for the PC part of the Vaio X, based around a 3.6Ghz P4 with 1 gig of RAM and an ATI Radeon X600XT video card.

Sadly, Sony have no plans to market the Vaio X outside Japan, so we will have to wait to see what they have planned for the international market.

The Vaio Type X

GameTrak: Dark Wind Bundle Due for Release

Beat-em-ups have always been a bit of an odd genre for me: the highly kinetic action on the screen – punching, kicking, disembowelment – has always been strangely at odds with the frantic button mashing dictated by the controls. Well, those first two techniques anyway.

Now being beaten by your opponent simply because he saw a button sequence on the internet that you didn’t know about, or thrashed by your girlfriend because she can press the triangle button faster than you can is a thing of the past – now you can throw real punches at your on-screen opponents.

GameTrak have developed a new PS2 beat-em-up, Dark Wind, that will be bundled with their eponymous controller. The game makes full use of the GameTrak hardware to allow players to punch and block with great accuracy.

The GameTrak controller itself consists of two sensors which can be attached to limbs or a prop (like that Samurai sword you’ve always wanted) and can measure with an accuracy of up to 1mm in a 3m cube. The controller can be used with many different genres of games – GameTrak themselves suggest golfing and lightgun games. I just can’t wait to see if it’s compatible with Freak Out. A USB peripheral, the controller may end up being used on XBox and PC games, as well as the PS2. The Dark Wind bundle will cost UK£69.99 or €99.

The controller won the Most Innovative Product award at the Leipzig Games Convention and has certainly stirred a lot of interest in a market that is starting to take notice of different types of games controllers, particularly in the wake of the success Sony has enjoyed with EyeToy.

Exotic controllers have become popular in arcades of late – indeed, when consoles can reproduce arcade cabinets exactly, cabinets are turning to controllers to make them stand out. Modern arcade cabinets now have swords, revolving seats, footballs and denim-clad buttocks as controllers to give an experience that console games don’t provide. Since the first light gun came in to the home, consoles are always quick to adopt what’s going on in the arcade – and the GameTrak will be able to emulate many current controller and game styles. Though I don’t expect to be wandering home with that buttock thing under my arm any time soon.

But I will soon have some bongos, and that’s even better.

GameTrak

Palm’s T5

Palm have announced the latest in their popular line of PDAs – the T5. There have been months and months of speculation over what features the T5, may or may not have, but the most interesting thing about the new handheld is its memory configuration.

The T5 is built around 256mb of Flash memory – 215mb is available to the user: 55mb is system memory, leaving 160mb for storage. As it’s Flash memory, data is much safer from sudden hard resets or the occasional month away from a power socket. Palm are clearly capitalising on the success of USB key drives and their ability to carry large amounts of documents between the home and the office. No doubt security managers everywhere will be shaking their heads in woe again.

The PDA runs PalmOS5.4, and whilst it features the T3 320 x 480 screen, there is no slider on the new model. Cunningly, there is a little groove where the screen might have slid apart, though this might just baffle some people.

No WiFi (that caught a few people out), but Bluetooth is still in – expect a WiFi SDIO card in due course. Street price is about US$399 (€322).

Palm T5

Intel Drops WiFi from Grantsdale

Intel have dropped their proposal to include integrated WiFi in its Grantsdale chipsets. Intel Wireless Connect was intended as a cheap and easy way to make WiFi networking ubiquitous – and help Intel promote and distribute their own wireless technologies.

PC manufacturers are not so sure, however, citing concerns that the functionality would add US$50 to US$75 (€40 to €68) to the price of a new desktop computer – this does not compare favourably to an add-in card which typically sells for US$50 (€40).

Whilst integrating WiFi into a chipset has advantages such as power consumption and compatibility, stand-alone wireless networking components have better signal reception and are easier to replace should they fail.

The timing is evidently wrong for Intel, but they have stated that they intend to reintroduce Wireless Connect when the price falls – or if a big enough PC manufacturer requests it.

Intel