Digital Media

COWON introduces A3 portable multimedia player

By Darren Quick

14:22 December 16, 2007 PST

December 17, 2007 COWON America, Inc. has announced the shipment of their new A3 portable multimedia player. Featuring a wide-range of high-end audio/video capabilities, the A3 incorporates direct recording from external A/V devices such as a TV, VCR or camcorder and high-definition video decoding for viewing on the unit’s 4-inch widescreen 16-million color, 800x480 (WVGA), TFT LCD display. Digital video performance is optimized courtesy of the latest Texas Instruments DaVinci DM6441 digital media processor and hard-drive capacity has been upped from the maximum 30GB, found in its predecessor the A2, up to 60GB. Read More

Kingston 19-in-1 Media Reader

By Darren Quick

19:23 December 13, 2007 PST

December 14, 2007 Flash memory formats continue to expand but fortunately, so too do the transfer solutions. Kingston’s latest external, hi-speed multi-card reader supports 19 types of Flash memory cards in a 3.61" x 2.71" package for USD$17. Read More

Pocket Album digital keychain photo viewer

By Emily Clark

22:57 December 10, 2007 PST

December 11, 2007 Offering convenience and versatility well beyond the capability of your stock-standard photo frame, digital photo displays are growing rapidly in popularity and functionality. Taking a step beyond the desk-bound or wall-mounted versions, even the humble keychain has now been digitized with products like the "Pocket Album", a portable digital keychain photo viewer with a 1.5-inch color LCD screen. Read More

Digital photo frame includes built-in clock, alarm and calendar

By Darren Quick

17:22 December 6, 2007 PST

December 7, 2007 Genius DPF-241 digital photo frames seeks to set itself apart from the field by also offering the convenience of a built-in clock, alarm and calendar. Read More

Xbox 360 gets DivX/XviD playback, we put it to the test

By Tim Hanlon

17:08 December 4, 2007 PST

The Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard Update arrived overnight, and added a long list of new functionality - although the one thing most people are interested in is the relatively unexpected arrival of DivX/XviD playback. We've spent the morning messing about with it to bring you the lowdown... because we figured your boss wouldn't call watching videos "work." Read More

Samsung’s new TruDirect optical disc drive create DVDs without the need for a hard disk

By Darren Quick

15:40 November 20, 2007 PST

November 21, 2007 Korean Electronics giant Samsung has introduced a new optical disc drive - the TruDirect SE-S204S - which allows users to “directly” create DVDs and burn digital content through a PC without the need for a hard drive, providing easy and fast real-time recording from nearly any digital device. Read More

EDGE Tech Corp's new 12-inch digital photo frame with MP3 player

By Darren Quick

20:30 November 16, 2007 PST

November 17, 2007 With the upsurge in the popularity of digital photo frames, it may not be too long before photos printed on paper are considered quaint. EDGE Tech Corp’s new offering is a 12-inch 800 x 600 resolution display for still and video images with an integrated MP3 player for musical accompaniment utilizing the inbuilt stereo speakers. Read More

Interactive tagging for online photos and videos

By Darren Quick

19:13 November 11, 2007 PST

November 12, 2007 Photobucket has launched a new breed of photo tagging that gives users the ability to share linked photos across email and online social networks. Users can add up to 20 links within a single photo before sharing them, giving those viewing the images easy access to a range of related information. Read More

Denon’s new S-302 promises big sound in a compact package

By Darren Quick

14:19 November 7, 2007 PST

November 8, 2007 Technology has proven time and time again that bigger isn’t always better, and that seems to be a view that audio/video specialist Denon subscribes to with the introduction of the S-302 compact Smart Theatre system - a little unit that promises a big sound and a wide array of features crammed into its compact body. Denon says the S-302 creates a true surround sound experience from just two speakers and a subwoofer (2.1), a feat that usually requires a 5.1 channel speaker system. The unit’s built-in 1080p DVD/CD player will scale content - including up-conversion from all analogue sources - to 1080p outputting via HDMI and also perform I/P conversion from interlaced to Progressive Scan from all video sources. Read More

Samsung unveils 64GByte SATA II SSDs

By Noel McKeegan

22:44 November 5, 2007 PST

November 6, 2007 Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has become the first in the industry to sample 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch 64Gigabyte solid state drives (SSD) with a super-fast SATA (Serial ATA) II/native SATA interface that writes at 100Megabyte per second (MBps). Read More

Helios Labs takes the PC out of network media centers

By Darren Quick

18:23 October 22, 2007 PDT

October 23, 2007 Looking to improve the usability of networking media hubs while retaining their flexibility and functionality, Helios Labs have taken the PC out and kept the media center with the announcement of the Odyssey. The Odyssey is a networking media hub capable of streaming content to multiple network media players, such as Helios Labs X-Line players, as well as any UPnP-enabled devices. The Odyssey supports up to 1TB storage capacity, features a fan-less, passive cooling design and will be the centerpiece of the company's focus on a PC-free home entertainment solution. Read More

Panasonic reveals Blu-ray recorder with 1-Terabyte hard drive

By Loz Blain

03:42 October 3, 2007 PDT

October 3, 2007 Panasonic has released a Blu-ray disc recorder with a stonking 1-terabyte hard drive built in. That’s a mind-warping 381 hours of full HD video. Read More

Upgraded Sony Reader continues the digital e-book push

By Loz Blain

03:31 October 3, 2007 PDT

October 3, 2007 Many bibliophiles feel that paper is an irreplaceable medium, but the inexorable march of the digital age is bringing new products into the marketplace that bridge the gap between the traditional book and the sheer convenience of electronic storage. Sony has just released the upgraded second version of its Reader digital book - a compact, comfortable and lightweight viewing platform that allows you to carry up to 160 full novels around at any time. Read More

IEye concept aims to increase Personal Media Player functionality

By Darren Quick

20:14 September 20, 2007 PDT

September 21, 2007 Out with the old and in with the new. That’s the standard approach to keeping pace with rapid developments in consumer electronics. But what if there was a way to delay obsolescence and extend the functionality of devices instead of automatically relegating them to landfill. This is the idea behind the IEye concept by Thomas Miller. Presented as an entry in to the “Create the Future Contest”, the concept proposes extending the life of Personal Media Players by attaching an add on device that includes a video still camera and microphone to boost functionality and re-purpose the existing unit. Read More

Sandisk launches new high-performance Flash memory cards

By Darren Quick

22:50 September 17, 2007 PDT

September 18, 2007 The rise and rise of Flash memory continues with SanDisk, the original inventor of Flash storage cards, launching its Express line of high-performance Flash memory products. Aimed at professional videographers and photographers who demand speed, durability and reliability the new 8GB and 16GB flash memory cards record high-definition video at 35 megabits per second. Read More

Individual Sound Projector from Loewe

By Shaun McKeegan

22:49 September 10, 2007 PDT

September 11, 2007 Consumer electronics manufacturer Loewe showcased its recently released Individual Sound Projector at this year’s IFA in Berlin. The sound projector is a genuine 5.1 surround sound system that operates from a single device, allowing TV, DVD and other digital sources to be operated from one remote control. The multi-channel surround sound system features integrated cinema settings and over-head effects without the need for any additional speakers or cables and after encountering the system at the IFA, Gizmag can attest that it sounds amazing. Read More

Image Moments customizable digital photo frame

By Emily Clark

00:13 September 6, 2007 PDT

September 6, 2007 Digital photo frames are a booming market with over 1.7 million sold in the U.S. alone in 2006. The latest foray into the market from Digital Foci - the Image Moments 8 - offers 256MB internal memory, eight custom décor framing options and supports a wide range of memory card formats. Read More

Centurion DiskHub storage device with DVD-RW drive

By Shaun McKeegan

22:44 August 22, 2007 PDT

August 23, 2007 Digistore Solutions is set to release a new carousel-like optical data storage hub called the Centurion DiskHub. Capable of holding up to 100 disks and including a built in dual layer DVD/CD rewritable drive (DVD-RW) for read/write functionality, the Centurion DiscHub offers a complete backup, archiving, storage and indexing solution. Read More

The great newspaper giveaway ... and why the music industry is still brain-dead

By Mike Hanlon

July 1, 2007 We admire people who have the consistent ability to think outside the square and the artist formerly known as Prince has a history of innovation, in not just his music. His latest stroke of business model remodelling genius is priceless because despite being guaranteed massive sales of his next album, he has decided to give the entire album away FREE inside a British Sunday newspaper, severely upsetting the music industry. The industry has only just begun to acknowledge how counter-productive its greed and lack of vision (e.g. suing its customers) has been, so it’s remarkable they cannot see the benefits of this incredibly savvy move. Read More

Panasonic's HVX: pro-level HD digital video camera under $6000

By Loz Blain

June 28, 2007 Panasonic's AG-HVX200 digital video camera exploded onto the pro-sumer scene 12 months ago, cramming the features and high definition picture quality of a $100,000 movie camera into a US$5,995 package with some key advantages of its own. A truly ground-breaking product, the HVX featured variable frame rates between 24 and 60 frames per second for true slow motion, 4 channel audio, multiple resolutions and formats, and a solid-state P2 flash memory system to replace tape and disc recording and revolutionize the editing process. Enthusiastically received by TV producers, film schools and independent filmmakers worldwide, HVX units have also been snapped up by Oscar-brandishing directors like Peter Jackson, James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola. Gizmag takes a look at what makes this camera so special, and some accessories that take the Panasonic HVX well into pro video territory. Read More

Lifemedia, the high-end digital home media server

By Loz Blain

May 23, 2007 Digital home entertainment servers seem to be heading high-end as Exceptional Innovation announces the release of its new Lifemedia server. Ready to integrate with home networks and EI's Lifeware home automation software, the Lifemedia units feature multi-core Intel processors, up to 4.5 Terabytes of storage, and high-end optical audio with Dolby Master Studio decoding. Most importantly, they look extremely sexy in an AV rack system. Read More

Philips launches 16.5 cm, high definition photo display for the home

By Mike Hanlon

April 11, 2006: 74 million digital cameras sold worldwide in 2004 passing film camera sales and that’s before we factor in the digital cameras available in every mobile phone. Most mobile phones now have a camera and people upgrade regularly. A billion phones will be sold this year. Around the turn of the deacde, half of all the people on the planet will have a phone and henceforth most human beings will be permanently carrying a digital camera. Mobile cameras are everywhere and the financial barriers to taking a photograph (i.e. the cost of a bunch of silver-halide based chemicals and photographic paper and labour in order to get a hard copy print) has been completely removed. Forty billion digital snapshots were taken in 2005 according to Kodak, the company that used to own the photography business. Philips today staked its claim to putting those 40 billion images on show. The Digital Photo Display, a 16.5 cm, high definition, full colour panel designed to digitally reproduce photos at their very best with print-like picture quality and full 16-bit colour and adjustable brightness of up to 200 nits. Digital images too often get filed to a PC hard drive or CD, rarely to be seen again – Philips aims to remedy that. The Digital Photo Display’s 137 x 91mm, 720 x 480 pixel LCD screen delivers a quality that matches colour prints in a traditional picture frame. Read More